Many of the agents who lost their jobs after Bowen Travel Group failed last Thursday have already been offered new roles.
The travel industry rushed to offer jobs to Bowen staff after Travel Weekly broke the news last Thursday that the company was entering administration, with the loss of 393 jobs.
Fifteen staff will join Hays Travel as homeworkers and the company is speaking to 20 more. Holidays Please, Midcounties Co-operative Travel and Designer Travel have also invited Bowen staff to contact them about potential jobs.
Staff met at the Northampton head office last Thursday morning to be told the firm was going into administration and they would not receive their wages, which were due on Friday.
Rebecca Hateney, who was assistant manager at the Tamworth shop, said: “The travel industry rallying round is really positive. It’s nice to see that some girls have already got jobs. I worked at Bowen for a year and really loved the company, it was brilliant. What’s happened is really sad.”
It has also emerged that agents rushed to look after their clients in the hours leading up to the company’s demise. Hateney said agents made sure customers received their tickets and foreign exchange when they realised there was something wrong.
“A lot of our customers are elderly and we didn’t want them to lose out on their holiday,” she said. Another agent wrote on Travelweekly.co.uk: “I went in very early, posted out all tickets we had in the branch and will be delivering the last few tomorrow.”
Administrators Deloitte are assisting staff with applying for payment from the government’s Redundancy Payments Service.