ONLY six Thomas Cook Holidays customers out of 150 due to take a South African coach trip have taken up the operator’s money-back cancellation offer following the coach crash last Monday.
Director and general manager Simon Laxton said the company had made an offer that any customer who had booked a coach tour in Canada, the US, Australia or South Africa could cancel their holiday with all money refunded.
He said: “We feel it is wrong to make people travel on a holiday they don’t want to go on – we will end up with complaints because people set off in the wrong frame of mind.”
He said he felt the media had been unfair in its reporting of the safety issue surrounding South Africa’s roads.
He said: “There is a decided difference between the coach we used, which was a Mercedes, and the vehicles that have been involved in other crashes on the roads out there. To my knowledge there has been no other accidents involving UK tourists and coaches like the ones we use.”