Thomas Cook In A Cyber Collapse
After 178-years of business Thomas Cook the old holiday firm has gone into liquidation after final financial negotiations failed and the UK Civil Aviation Authority said the company had "ceased trading with immediate effect". This has now caused the biggest ever peacetime repatriation, with the aim to bring home more than 150,000 British holidaymakers.
Now Get Safe Online is warning that it will spark a rash of scams, perpetrated by fraudsters exploiting the long established old firm’s compulsory liquidation.
Typically, of such situations, you may receive emails, texts, phone calls or messages/posts on social media claiming to be either from the Official Receiver, Thomas Cook itself or a legal firm, offering refunds and/or compensation.
These may request details of your bank account or ask you to click on a link. Alternatively, they could request an upfront payment as a fee for handling compensation claims.
Such communications could be received whether you are a Thomas Cook customer or not, with the fraudsters relying on hitting some genuine customers amongst the thousands of people they target randomly. Shareholders may also be targeted by such scams.
Reasons for Thomas Cook’s Collapse
The main reason for the business collapse has been caused by Thomas Cook’s lack of electronic adaption and non-creative use of digital technology. This is because the management for the last couple of decades has not changed with the IT times.
So for a while the business had not been changing with the new generations methods of holiday search and purchase.
Thomas Cook still remained in its pre-Internet times and tried to sell holidays directly via travel shops and printed brochures and did not properly promote itself and its holidays via the Net.
Yet back in its history it had been a very modern holiday company.
History of the Brand
Over the years one of the world's best known holiday brands has taken millions of holidaymakers around the world, responding to technological advances in transport and social trends.
The founder harnessed the UK's newly built railways to offer his first 12-mile trip from Leicester to Loughborough, at the cost of a shilling per head (around £3 in current costs). Those travelling were so-called "temperance supporters" - supporting the prohibition of alcohol.
By 1855, after having pioneered trips around the British Isles and to London's Great Exhibition, Thomas Cook set his sights across the Channel to Paris where the International Exhibition was being held. His commercial tour there, linked to other European destinations, was a huge success. More European trips followed, closely followed by America, Asia and the Middle East. Thomas Cook's grandsons added winter sports, motor car tours and commercial air travel to its offerings.
Package Holiday Boom
At the end of the 1920s it changed hands for the first of many times when the grandsons unexpectedly sold the business to the Belgian owner of the Orient Express. But as World War Two broke out, it was nationalised by the British government as part of British Railways, to save it from the Nazi occupation. The post-war years were characterised by a holiday boom in the UK. For Thomas Cook, this meant taking holiday-makers on package holidays abroad.
Travel Revolution
Through its long history, it is the 21st Century that the company has found hardest to adapt to. The digital age has seen a revolution in travel. The Internet and the rise of budget airlines have made holidays cheaper and more accessible than ever before. The package holiday remained popular, but customers are extremely price sensitive and Thomas Cook's profit margins were slim because they still had the old age pre-digital costs supporting the business and bringing it to insolvency.
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