Thomas Cook has confirmed 14 staff are facing redundancy or have entered into a consultation as a result of the decision to close two Midlands Co-operative websites.
The sites co-opholidays.co.uk and ski-direct.co.uk are to be scrapped, with traffic redirected to co-operativetravel.co.uk.
Nine of the staff are self employed and have been given three months’ notice of redundancy. Five employees of the joint venture have been entered into a 30 day consultation period.
A Thomas Cook spokeswoman told Travel Weekly: “Since Thomas Cook, The Co-operative Travel and the Midlands Co-operative formed a joint venture last year, we’ve always said that we would conduct a full review of all the business functions and look to integrate and strengthen the combined business by addressing underperforming areas and minimising overlap and duplication.
“Following this comprehensive review, we have proposed that we should close the websites of co-opholidays.co.uk and ski-direct.co.uk as we already have an established and successful Co-operative Travel website – co-operativetravel.co.uk – which offers the same products, receives the majority of customer traffic and is supported by our Altrincham office.
“We are working closely with those 14 affected colleagues as they go through the consultation and notice period.”
The spokeswoman said the staff had been made aware of vacancies within the Co-operative Personal Travel Advisors (CoPTA) homeworking division.