LONDON: Hundreds of thousands of travelers were stranded across the world on Monday after the British tour company Thomas Cook collapsed in the middle of the night, immediately halting almost all its flights and hotel services and laying off its employees.

Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority announced about 2:30am that Thomas Cook, a 178-year-old company that helped create the package tour industry, had ceased trading. It said the firm’s four airlines will be grounded, and its 21,000 employees in 16 countries including 9,000 in the UK will lose their jobs.

The collapse of the firm is expected to have sweeping effects across the European and North African tourism industries and elsewhere, as hotels worry about being paid for tourists they have already served and confirmed Thomas Cook bookings for high-season winter resorts suddenly are cancelled.

Overall, about 600,000 people were travelling with the company as of Sunday, though it was unclear how many of them would be left stranded, as some travel subsidiaries were in talks with local authorities to continue operating. Thomas Cook says it served 22 million customers a year.

The British government was taking charge of getting the firm’s 150,000 UK-based customers back home from vacation spots across the globe, the largest repatriation effort in the country’s peacetime history. The process began on Monday but officials urged patience and warned of delays.

A stream of reports Monday morning hinted at the extent of the travel chaos: some 50,000 Thomas Cook travelers were stranded in Greece; up to 30,000 stuck in Spain’s Canary Islands; 21,000 were left in Turkey and 15,000 were in Cyprus. Airports saw queues of Thomas Cook travelers lining up for other ways to get home.

Some people took the news in stride. Bengt Olsson, who was traveling in Cyprus from Sweden, said there were worse places to be stranded. “It’s nice to stay here, it’s warm,” he said.

The reality was far harsher for the Thomas Cook workers who lost their jobs overnight.

“The staff have been stabbed in the back without a second’s thought,” said Brian Strutton, head of the British Airline Pilots’ Association.

An estimated 1 million future Thomas Cook travelers also found their bookings for upcoming holidays canceled. Many of them are likely to receive refunds under travel insurance plans but had no idea when they would get their money back.

Lewis and Amy Bromiley, from Manchester, England, had paid 7,000 pounds ($8,700) for a January honeymoon in the Maldives.

“Me and my wife are devastated,” said Bromiley, 25. “We’ll have to wait for the refund, which could take months.” The company, which began in 1841 with one-day train excursions in England, grew to have travel operations around the world but has been struggling for years due to competition from budget airlines and the ease of booking low-cost accommodations through the internet.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2019