Creditors are claiming up to £1.2 million from failed travel firm Enjoy Holidays, of which nearly £900,000 is being sought by the travel trade.
They are due to meet next Tuesday to consider whether to approve the administrator’s report.
The five-branch travel agency Enjoy Holidays, which also traded as Allen Sturges Travel, went into administration in August after the withdrawal of its bank overdraft facility and capital from Turkish travel group owners Anex, which bought the company in November 2011.
A report by administrators Alexander Lawson Jacobs shows a list of 95 creditors, with an estimated £892,436 owed to the travel trade. The main trade creditors are Abta and the Independents’ Advantage Insurance.
The largest single creditor is Abta, which is seeking around £650,000 from the failed firm. The Independents’ Advantage Insurance, based in Guernsey, a wholly-owned subsidiary of consortium Advantage Travel Centres, is claiming £242,436.
The administrators’ insolvency manager Andy Gray said much of the estimated £1.2 million related to costs resulting from the company’s failure, such as redundancy payments to employees, or to holidays which would no longer be honoured. Around £115,000 of the claims relate to employee costs.
The maximum amount paid out to creditors “realistically” is unlikely to top £1 million, he added.
Findlay, who managed the agency, is himself owed more than £15,000, NatWest bank is owed more than £150,000 and former owners Anex £90,000.
In turnover terms, Enjoy Holidays’ total transaction values for the year ending October 31, 2011, were around £8 million, of which commission earned amounted to £833,749.
The company first ran into financial difficulties after buying Allen Sturges Travel in 2008 when it discovered £270,000 of debts it had been unaware of at the time of the acquisition.
Following the company’s collapse, Findlay’s wife Nikki, director of Enjoy the World Travel, made a last-ditch attempt to acquire the company’s premises and assets to run it as a managed service agency.
But negotiations to trade under another company’s Abta licence fell through. Her company has since made an informal offer to buy the company’s database for £5,000 and negotiations are ongoing.
Midcounties Travel Co-op did also express an interest in buying the failed agency but was unable to make a quick sale of the business and was concerned about adverse publicity.