A senior member of the travel industry has accused industry analysts Plimsoll Publishing of scaremongering after it released a report claiming nearly 8,400 tour operator jobs could be lost due to the worsening economy.
Youtravel.com sales and marketing director Paul Riches went on to accuse the third edition Plimsoll Analysis 2008 of “rabble rousing and distracting” for predicting as many as 210 companies should consider consolidation or go bust.
The report also claimed as many as 6,945 jobs would be lost among travel agencies.
Riches said: “Everyone is so focussed on getting in late sales at the moment to have a report out distracting staff and demotivating them is rather irresponsible.
“We should be pulling together at times like this not coming out with statistics about one of the largest travel companies, but not naming them, having to ditch almost 900 jobs.”
Plimsoll senior analyst David Pattison said: “We’re reporting on the facts as we see them, far from wanting to be accused of scaremongering we undertook the research with the purpose of finding something positive but it wasn’t there.
“We’re telling the situation as it is, we’ve no interest or benefit in saying everything is terrible in the travel industry.”