Another Travel Agency goes bust....

[Barnsley]

I see another of the big players closed down on Friday...

Although after reading the article , it would appear it went bust due to losing $2M speculating in the property market!!!

[the lynx]

In case anyone wants to Google, the keyword is Asia-Euro.

[rajagainstthemachine]

Why is this big news?

[JR8]

I take it as a warning call if you're in the habit of spending money via local travel agents, as every year or two some big agent seems to go under.

--- Out in these parts I have found no virtue in using travel agents. Versus back home, where an agent can sell you a packaged holiday cheaper, often a lot cheaper, than you could ever buy the components yourself. That ability is due to their bulk-buying power which they pass on to the customer.
Here, we buy flights direct from the airline, and book hotels directly, and the latter can always arrange any ground transfers.

[Brah]

Why is this big news?

Friends of friends lost big money here when this happened to them a few years back.

It's not just TAs - Yoga studios and sports clubs as well, and freelancers coming to condos - once you lay it out you may not get it back.

[Wd40]

Slightly off topic, how about guys like Booking.com and Expedia.



Booking.com has a sprawling office in MBFC. Expedia too has a big office in Gurgaon, India and they pay their IT staff as good as banks.

I sometimes wonder how do these guys make so much of commission by selling tickets and that too at prices cheaper than the original.

[JR8]

Slightly off topic, how about guys like Booking.com and Expedia.

I'll use such since they have IATA/ATOL protection vs bankruptcy. Then you book on a credit card, and that gives you further protection against default (at least, a UK card does). But again, they are simply agents for the pieces, rather than sellers of packaged holidays.

I remember walking into a big local agent years back, I think it was Chan Brothers, down near Bugis. They used to have multi-page ads in the paper every week => BIG known agent, you think you can trust them. I went wanting to book a flight or something simple. It was a zoo in there, maybe a hundred people. I finally got to speak to a sales agent... and she didn't speak any English at all - a bit of an 'WT? moment'. Never again, this is why I try now to do everything online.

More the point, here *physical* agents have no advantage. They have no buying power, and indeed are more expensive, since they load your bill with their costs. They usually haven't visited where you're going, and have zero knowledge of it so give you no edge. The reverse of back home.

[Wd40]

SPAMMER has taken up the place in century square mall in Tampines, that was earlier occupied by FiveStar.

I would also di DIY wherever possible, its so much more fun. The only time I used FiveStar was to book Star cruise. I got a good discount compared to the online site.

[Barnsley]

The story is that they went out of business due to SPECULATING IN property.

The owners spunked all the Travel Agency takings literally up the walls of many properties.

It looks like the Travel side was doing nicely , but nice enough for the owners who wanted to make the big easy money of property speculating in Singapore.

[Barnsley]

Slightly off topic, how about guys like Booking.com and Expedia.



Booking.com has a sprawling office in MBFC. Expedia too has a big office in Gurgaon, India and they pay their IT staff as good as banks.

I sometimes wonder how do these guys make so much of commission by selling tickets and that too at prices cheaper than the original.

Maybe the commission is the same as the banks , hence they pay the same.

Maybe they do large volumes of work as well.

I have used them all at one time or another if the price is right.