Gillett Travel Firm Collapses

Around 4,000 British travellers might find themselves without their holidays as cruise agency G&B Travel, which operates under the name Gillett Travel, folds.

G&B Travel, based in Bolton, has been offering cruise deals with most of the large cruise companies: Royal Caribbean, Celebrity cruises and Disney. But on Friday 11th September it said it couldn’t meet its future liabilities and so would immediately cease trading. The advice from ABTA is that anybody who has made a booking through G&B Travel or Gillett Travel should make direct contact with the cruise line in question to get the most recent information about their holiday’s status. The holidays should all be covered by ATOL, which is a financial protection scheme for holidaymakers. If an ATOL tour operator fails, the ATOL scheme ensures customers contracted with the ATOL holder for an air package or a flight, do not lose the money paid over or are not stranded abroad. This suggests that the cruise lines involved should go ahead with all existing bookings.

September is a notoriously bad month for travel agencies to collapse, and this is the time of year when many smaller travel companies: agencies, excursion operators and so on, will find that they can’t meet future costs and so will vanish, often leaving people stranded unless they have ATOL coverage.