SALT LAKE CITY — British travel company Thomas Cook’s abrupt closure caught many travelers around the world off guard Monday morning. Several thousand were reportedly left stranded when the company ceased trading overnight; the company’s website has a three-paragraph message announcing its closure with a link to how travelers might be able to return with government assistance.

Amid the chaos, some 21,000 employees in 16 countries will lose their jobs as the company folds, according to the Associated Press.

Founded in 1841, Thomas Cook was the world’s oldest travel company. While the method of its closure came as a surprise to many across the world, Brian Hollien, president of Salt Lake City-based Morris Murdock Travel, said there were signs that Thomas Cook Group wouldn’t last much longer.

For example, Reuters reported on Friday that the company had asked lenders for more than $250 million to avoid a possible collapse that eventually happened just days later.

“They have had financial difficulties in recent years, and there had been talk within the industry they were still having a great deal of difficulties," said Hollien, who has been a part of the travel industry for nearly four decades.

"It did not come as a shock to me," he continued. "I guess the scope of it, though, really is that it came so sudden and it was a complete collapse stranding so many hundreds and thousands of passengers.”

Here’s what Thomas Cook's closure means for Utah and the travel agency industry:

Thomas Cook’s indirect tie with Utah

To be clear, Thomas Cook Group doesn’t have employees in Utah, and its airline didn’t have direct flights into Utah. However, it’s a company that helps people see travel options to travel the world — that includes promoting trips to Utah.

In fact, an Aug. 30 archive of the website shows travelers could book flights to Utah through its website as recently as Sept. 14. Travelers could fly from the United Kingdom to Salt Lake International Airport for prices ranging from 351 to 753 British pounds, which equates to about $436 to $936 in the U.S. The website mentioned some of the fun things to do in Salt Lake City and at the national parks in Utah.

Some pages that weren’t archived featured information about the best time to travel to Utah and holidays in Utah for travelers to know; it was a tool for people to visit the state. That’s why Utah Office of Tourism officials spent Monday trying to figure out the impact Thomas Cook’s closure might have on state tourism.

As it turns out, it won't have much impact at all for Utah, Vicki Varela, the office’s managing director, told KSL.com.

Varela explained some travelers come to Utah through Thomas Cook. Those who do, come on what she called “short-haul beach vacations” — vacations where someone flies into one destination and stays there throughout their trip, experiencing different spots within the same location. That doesn’t fit the typical visitor coming to Utah from abroad, who may check out multiple national parks in addition to Salt Lake City.

“Our target audience is more of the active, adventurous, experienced visitors. You may see a little bit of Thomas Cook activity from people who fly into the Vegas area and do a trip to Zion National Park or something. But as a whole, it’s not going to be very disruptive of our international strategy,” Varela said. “Most Thomas Cook customers are doing the beach vacation or the major East Coast-West Coast city (spots).”

Hollien said his company does work with travel agencies like Thomas Cook, but not that company directly; therefore, its customers weren’t affected. However, it may have an indirect impact given that the Thomas Cook airplanes were halted and Thomas Cook also operates German-based Condor planes.

Related:

Hundreds of thousands stranded as travel agency collapses

Families stranded, honeymoons and vacations canceled, thousands of workers laid off: The sudden collapse of British tour company Thomas Cook and its network of airlines and hotels sowed chaos for hundreds of thousands of travelers and businesses around the world Monday.

What collapse says about travel industry

We know that tourism is ever-increasing. It’s a $9 billion industry in Utah and a recent report by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis found that guided tours and outfitted travel was a $12.9 billion industry in the U.S. in 2017, which was an 11.4% increase from the previous year.

There aren’t any indications that the U.S. is an anomaly on the global scale either. That's likely a reflection of a successful economy, Hollien said.

“Right now, we’re currently in one of our best years ever,” he said. “Cruise sales and tour sales are strong. … Honestly, we’re an industry that’s no different than a lot of other industries, in that we’re going to be a reflection of how the U.S. economy goes.”

So why did Thomas Cook fail while the industry, as a whole, seems to be doing well? Hollien theorizes it may have something to do with its vast number of employees and the fact that it had so many enterprises aside from connecting people on trips.

According to the Associated Press, the company had 550 travel agency shops, 200 hotels with about 40,000 total rooms, business with another 3,150 hotels, 105 planes and 22 million yearly customers, and markets in 16 countries.

“It just might be a classic story of overextending themselves. They had 21,000 employees throughout the world — that’s a huge, huge company. I can’t think of a counterpart like Thomas Cook is in the United States,” Hollien said. “No one has that quite vertical integration, where they are providing everything from every aspect of your travel component.”

It doesn’t help that the company apparently didn’t compete well with emerging technologies such as at-home vacation planning, home-rental options like Airbnb, or low-cost airline options.

“I think what’s to be learned from this is that you just have to stay current with technology,” Varela said.

What all travelers should know

There’s a cautionary tale inside this story that applies to all travelers. The reality is, a company could shut down suddenly as Thomas Cook did overnight. Anyone could end up stranded and out of the money spent on a trip.

Hollien recommends travelers get travel protection insurance from a third-party company to avoid the possibility that something happens to the company you’re doing business with. He pointed out that even credit card companies aren’t 100% reliable when it comes to this.

For example, it’s possible that a U.S. traveler purchased a Thomas Cook package on a credit card. If the credit card company doesn’t offer insurance on travel purchases, the purchaser would be out that money when the travel company goes under.

“Make sure your credit card provider provides travel insurance,” Hollien said. “Secondly, that you buy secondary travel insurance that’s not related to the (travel) provider. … You might think, if I have to cancel my vacation, I’ll get my money back. But you never think further down the line, ‘Oh my goodness, what if this company fails? How am I going to get my money back?'”

Unfortunately, as he points out, if Thomas Cook offered travel insurance, its customers likely lost that benefit the moment the company folded.

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