Last week, just after 2am on Monday, the UK Civil Aviation Authority announced that Thomas Cook had ceased trading with immediate effect.

This news had been predicted because talks with Thomas Cook executives and shareholders ended with no solution.

150,000 customers are left stranded abroad and 9,000 people who work for Thomas cook in the UK uncertain about their jobs.

When the announcement was made, customers flocked to airports in the middle of the night in fright of their flights taking off, however they didn’t.

” Thomas Cook simply wasn’t differentiating enough”

But how did this happen?

There are lot of reasons for this: uncertainty about brexit, a decline in bookings, the rise of low-cost airlines, online travel agents and people who just put their own holidays together without  a travel agent.

In May, Thomas Cook posted a half-year loss of £1.5 billion, £1.1 billion of which was caused by the decision to write down the value of My Travel, the business it merged with in 2007. That firm nearly collapsed in 2011 but was helped by banks, which left Thomas Cook with a debt burden of £1.7 billion.

In August, Thomas Cook secured a £900 million rescue deal led by its biggest shareholder, Chinese firm Fosun, but more recently its lending banks demanded it raise a further £200 million contingency funding. On Sunday, talks to secure this failed.

 

 

In the summer, the firm said there was “now little doubt” that Brexit had caused customers to delay their summer holiday plans. Political unrest in holiday destinations such as Turkey, as well as last summer’s prolonged heatwave in the UK, also had an impact on bookings.

And travel expert Simon Calder, travel editor at The Independent, said Thomas Cook simply “wasn’t ready for the 21st Century”.

“Now everybody can pretend they are a travel agent. They’ve got access to all the airline seats, hotel beds, car rentals in the world and they can put things together themselves. Thomas Cook simply wasn’t differentiating enough.”