Thomas Cook to shut 195 travel outlets, cut 2,500 jobs in Britain
06 Mar 2013
Travel services provider Thomas Cook is cutting 2,500 British jobs and closing 195 travel outlets in the UK as part of its restructuring.
The world's oldest travel group, Thomas Cook, has already closed 168 outlets in the UK since 2011, and the new round of closures will reduce its total number of travel agencies in the UK to 874.
The company has some 1,069 travel agencies and employs 15,500 people in the UK and Ireland.
Thomas Cook, Europe's largest tour operator and UK's second-largest foreign exchange group, will axe around 900 administrative and managerial jobs while the rest will come from within its retail network and back-office work.
These new measures that are part of its three-year turnaround plan will reduce costs in the UK business by £140 million.
Peter Fankhauser, Thomas Cook's chief executive for the UK and continental Europe, said, "It is never easy to make decisions that impact directly on our people, but we also owe it to our customers to shape the business effectively and ensure that, when they book their holiday with us, our administrative costs are as low as possible.''
