Travel industry guarantee fund not damaged by FTI bankruptcy
Published: Friday, Dec 13th 2024, 12:20
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The travel industry's guarantee fund has suffered almost no damage from the bankruptcy of German tour operator FTI. This was stated by the head of the guarantee fund, Marco Amos, in an interview with the tourism trade journal "Travel Inside" on Friday.
In the current year, the Guarantee Fund had to reimburse three claims, one of which did not result in any reimbursement claims, said Amos. The largest case was the bankruptcy of FTI Touristik AG, which resulted in 450 reimbursement claims for the Guarantee Fund. 150 cases were attributable to Bigxtra Touristik, which was a white-label producer for major distributors such as Lidl.
In total, there are 600 dossiers for the Travel Guarantee Fund, said Amos. That is "far fewer than I had originally feared. As of today, we have practically processed all the cases." There are only a few stragglers left.
1.5 million refunded
For the FTI and Bigxtra cases, the guarantee fund reimbursed a total of around CHF 1.5 million. This is much less than expected. The 1.5 million is covered. "We have practically zero loss for the guarantee fund," said Amos. This is because the FTI Touristik guarantee amount was more than sufficient.
In contrast, the amount guaranteed by Bigxtra was not quite sufficient, but the actual damage was negligible, said Amos. It was significantly less than 100,000 francs.
This year, the guarantee fund will be able to put an additional CHF 3 million into the reserves. "That will give us around CHF 12 million in reserves," said Amos. "It will allow us to cover the majority of bankruptcy cases in Switzerland together with reinsurance."
The reinsurance amounts to CHF 9 million in additional payments with a deductible of CHF 3 million. "We would have to pay the first 3 million ourselves. If it goes over this 3 million, the reinsurance would also pay," said Amos.
"Theoretically, we can cover a bankruptcy of 21 million, but that would ruin us." The guarantee fund will therefore work for a few more years to increase the reserves.
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