Goldtrail Holidays has gone into administration with an estimated 16,000 people overseas.
CAA head of Atol licensing Andy Cohen confirmed the Turkey specialist had failed at about 18.00hrs on Friday evening, but said the authority was still “in the dark on detail”.
“It went into administration only an hour ago and I came straight back into work,” he told Travel Weekly. “We are requesting information as we speak.”
Cohen said the failure was not on the scale of XL Leisure Group which collapsed in September 2008 leaving 60,000 holidaymakers overseas.
“We will be able to deal with this one in-house,” he confirmed.
Speculation had been rife for some time that Goldtrail could be experiencing difficulties, but even Cohen, who only this month predicted a spate of failures this year, “particularly of operators to the Eastern Med”, said the timing of company’s demise had been “a shock for all of us”.
Online travel agent On The Beach sold high volumes of Goldtrail Holidays. Commercial director Johnny Pollard said: “We have drafted in extra staff over the weekend to make sure our customers can get home and to re-book those with forward bookings.”
Paul Evans, chief executive of lowcostholidays.com, said he was working with his team late into the night rebooking customers. “We have a reasonable number of forward bookings but we had provided supplier failure insurance so I’m not too worried. We are just trying to be helpful and sort this out.
“The prices for Turkey are much higher now so in some cases we are suggesting alternatives.”
The CAA will organise travel home for the 16,000 people stranded abroad. The majority of flights back from Turkey will operate as planned but flights back from Greece may be disrupted.
All forward bookings have been cancelled, starting with the four flights meant to leave from Gatwick on Saturday morning.
Customers will have to pay for replacement trips but can claim back for their Goldtrail holidays via the CAA. However, availability may be short during one of the busiest weekends of the year.
Other companies may lay on extra capacity to cope with the demand. Kiss Flights director Paul Moss said: “We are reviewing the situation as we go along. The main priority is to fill any remaining Kiss Flights stock and if there is a requirement to add capacity then, providing we can do so within our current licence, we will do that.”
Turkey specialist Holidays4u is also considering adding extra capacity. Sales and marketing director Joe Lavers said: “We still have availability, but if clients want to rebook they should do it quickly. We are waiting to see how many customers are in a position to rebook and we’ll consider putting on extra flights.”
The company traded under the names Goldtrail Holidays, Goldtrail Travel and Sunmar and carried 250,000 passengers in 2008.
To contact the CAA, call 0203 4410846