Lowcost Travel Group, one of Europe’s early bedbanks and a mid-tier online travel agency, has ceased trading.
The company says in a statement on its web site that it has ended its activities following “exhaustive attempts by the group’s directors to rescue the group, which has been hampered by the recent and ongoing turbulent financial environment”.
One of the company’s backers, Albion Enterprise, got £123,000 from the sale of its investment in Lowcost Travel Group at some point between October 2015 and February this year.
The brands in the group include the consumer-facing Lowcost Holidays and LowcostBeds, the trade accommodation arm of the business.
Some 110,000 travellers are due to be travelling on trips booked through the OTA in the coming weeks and months, and there are supposedly around 27,000 customers in-resort, according to Travel Weekly.
However, the impact on the collapse of its B2B bedbank could be even wider. The “About Us” page on the now-defunct lowcostbeds website talked up.
1. 250,000 unique hotels across 450 most popular destinations.
2. Central and local operations supported by 10 offices worldwide
3. Available in 50 countries with content in 13 languages
4. More than 3 million passengers worldwide each year
5. Accessible via web portal, XML connection and multilingual call centre
6. Consistent growth since our inception in 2004
The company came onto the scene in 2004, initially to ride on the growth of dynamic packaging in Europe whereby travel agencies could bundle accommodation (from LowcostBeds) and flights together rather than pick a pre-organised package holiday from a tour operator.
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