Europe’s third-largest tour operator FTI Group filed for insolvency in the Munich regional court today, the German company said in a statement, as bookings continued to fall even after a recent one-euro buyout proposal. In addition to sinking orders, multiple suppliers insisted on advance payments, which FTI is no longer able to provide. The group has opened a hotline and a website for customers, the statement added.
Numerous Germans who are currently on holiday in destinations like Mallorca with the company or who want to go on holiday with it in the next few weeks are affected. According to a report in the Bild newspaper, employees were informed of the insolvency in a video broadcast this morning. The law firm Finkenhof from Frankfurt/Main was appointed as the insolvency administrator.
Even before the bankruptcy, the booking systems were no longer accessible, allegedly due to a technical fault. The homepage of its own hotel brand Labranda was also switched off in the morning. Five years after the bankruptcy of tour operator Thomas Cook (including Neckermann and Öger Tours), this is the second bankruptcy of a major German tour operator. The FTI management had spent the whole weekend in Berlin negotiating with representatives of the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federal Ministry of Economics for a guarantee to cover a financing gap in the high double-digit million range in order to get through the summer. However, the federal government rejected this after lengthy talks.
The Munich-based company was already in crisis before the coronavirus pandemic. Only 595 million euros from the German government’s Economic Stabilisation Fund (WSF) and a further 280 million euros from the company’s bank UniCredit, guaranteed by the federal government and the state of Bavaria, kept FTI afloat . In mid-April, the tour operator’s rescue seemed to be within reach: US investor Certares announced that it would buy the company, which now had debts of around one billion euros, assume the debts and provide an additional 125 million euros in fresh capital. However, this idea was apparently abandoned.
The Federal Competitions Office had not yet authorised the takeover. This was expected in late summer at the earliest, i.e. at the end of August/beginning of September. And that became a problem for FTI: until then, the company, which was founded in 1983, lacked fresh money to bridge the summer. FTI, based in Munich, manages around 90 subsidiaries worldwide and employs around 11,000 people. In the past financial year 2022/2023, the group achieved a turnover of 4.1 billion euros.