Tour Operators, Airlines Advised to ‘Not Panic’ Over Greece EU Crisis

Graham Pickett, Deloitte lead partner – travel, hospitality and leisure, advised the tourism industry to not “overreact” to the financial crisis in Greece, Travelweekly reported on Thursday.

“What I do not want to see is this industry panicking and moving routes or plans and announcing that to the consumer at large because that’s not going to be helpful,” Mr. Pickett said during the sixth Travel Matters UK conference of the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) held in London on Wednesday.

He said that he expects the European Union to “muddle through”.

Andrew Swaffield, Monarch Group chief executive, said that a sudden reaction from the travel industry — airlines moving capacity to an alternative destination like Spain, prompting prices to collapse and leaving Greece with too little capacity for demand — would “create a crisis of a much bigger magnitude”.

He said that there is a history of airlines tending to overreact and moving their capacity too quickly.

“We would certainly be looking to support Greece and not overreact”, he said.

Source: Travelweekly