Jewel in the Crown owner speaks out over collapse

Speaking to TTG, Platon Loizou, the managing director of the Turkey and Goa specialist said this year the company has around 2,700 passengers confirmed on 1,200 bookings for the summer.

He added in a normal year he would expect to have between 8,000 and 10,000 passengers booked by this time of the year through the business which has been in existence for 29 years and which he has owned for 18.

With airlines demanding he commit to as many as 18,000 seats for the summer season, Loizou said he was forced to pull the plug on the operator which had further problems in the wake of a number of attacks this year in the country.

“It’s just not possible, especially with the situation in Turkey,” he added. “There’s no issues on the coast but Turkey’s been in the news on a daily basis and sales in the last three or four weeks have fallen off a cliff.

“Do you sign for 18,000 (aircraft) seats and go into the high season waiting for something to happen? It just wasn’t possible.”

Loizou said the destination first began to suffer in the wake of the Tunisia attack, which saw 38 people killed in a resort near Sousse.

He added: “After the Tunisia situation sales fell off a cliff. We had high season capacity and we shifted it but we didn’t make any money and that’s when people started to worry and it is the same situation in any Muslim destination.

Waiting for the situation to improve

“I was waiting and hoping that Turkey would improve and political situation would improve. We should have been selling to 50 or 60 passengers a day but to Turkey we were selling to five or six.”

Jewel in the Crown, which sent just under 3,000 customers to Goa in the 2015/16 winter season, was also heavily affected by the airlines.

Loizou said: “Ten years ago there were 15 airlines to buy seats from, now there’s one or two.

“If you look at the share prices of the airlines, they have gone through the roof but they are not interested in supporting those they have done business with for years. I don’t blame them, it is the reality of the new commercial world.

“I should have changed the model and the system. The guaranteed model is still profitable when the market is booming.”

Loizou added the operator has no customers overseas at the moment while the £200,000 it had in the bank which is now in the hands of the liquidators.

The most recent accounts for Jewel in the Crown Holidays Ltd, showed that it made a pre-tax loss of £490,000 for the year to the end of March 2015. Turnover fell from £12.3 million to £11.7 million.

However, Loizou said he was most concerned about the future of his team of 11 staff, who between them have 150 years of experience in the industry and worked at Jewel’s Crawley offices.

He is also planning his own comeback, once the current situation has been sorted.

Loizou said: “I’m 62 years old but I’m not ready for retirement. I’m healthy and while I’ve got a bit of blood pressure, what tour operator doesn’t?”