BREAKING NEWS: Absolute shuts down

Absolute Tours is closing down as a wholesaler to the SA travel industry. Tourvest tour Operators (TTO) says it will retain the ski division, Absolute Ski, in its present form, while certain products (TNN believes they are Cosmos and Globus, coach tours which belonged in the ATO fold), will be restructured as internal wholesalers of niche products to the division’s main business, Tourvest Retail Travel (TRT), (mainly Amex and Seekers), and will therefore no longer serve the whole travel industry. Tourvest Outbound Travel Services md, Jonathan Gerber, says TTO is a small part of the division, accounting for only about 2% of its annual turnover.“We have tried to raise TTO to an acceptable performance level for several years but it has become clear that fixing the operation in its present form is taking up a disproportionate amount of management time which could be devoted to growing our main business,” Gerber said. Gerber told TNW, TNN’s sister publication last year that the October shelving of ATO was only temporary, and it was ‘by no means a doom and gloom scenario.’ That was when Absolute cut back on several products, including domestic tourism. There will be retrenchments - TTO employs about 50 people and only a core group will remain in the restructured operation. But Gerber said every effort would be made to employ the rest elsewhere in the group. Kate Nathan (katen@nowmedia.co.za)