Hays to buy Thomas Cook British stores to save more than 2,500 staff

LONDON: Hays Travel will buy all Thomas Cook’s British travel agent shops, potentially saving up to 2,500 jobs, Britain’s insolvency agency said on Wednesday, in a rare reprieve for high streets across the country. Thomas Cook, the world’s oldest travel company whose shops have been a feature of British town centres for generations, collapsed last month, and its UK business went into liquidation. Hays Travel will acquire all 555 stores and look to re-employ former employees from Thomas Cook’s retail operations, Britain’s Insolvency Service said in a statement. “This agreement... provides re-employment opportunities for a significant number of former Thomas Cook employees, and secures the future of retail sites up and down the UK high street,” Jim Tucker, Partner at KPMG, said. Hays Travel is a private company, jointly owned and managed by Managing Director John Hays and Chair Irene Hays. The 40-year-old firm based in Sunderland in north-east England reached sales of more than £1 billion in 2018. “It is a game-changer for us, almost trebling the number of shops we have and doubling our workforce — and for the industry, which will get to keep some of its most talented people,” John Hays said in a statement. Thomas Cook’s collapse stranded hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers around the globe and sparked the largest peacetime repatriation effort in British history. — Reuters