The true cost of last week’s collapse of Monarch Airlines is only slowly becoming clear.
Following predictions of “tremendous financial impact on the Algarve”, hoteliers association boss Elidérico Viegas has come clean.
He “calculates global losses of €36 million for the Algarve”, reports tabloid Correio da Manhã this morning, adding that Viegas “believes” the demise of Britain’s fifth largest carrier “could have a negative impact on tourist occupation in the region of 5%”.
Viegas’ statements follow warnings sounded last week by the president of the Association of Algarve Tourism Carlos Gonçalves Luís (click here).
The problem is that Monarch Airlines played a leading role in low-season tourism, and there are no guarantees that other carriers will pick up the thousands of reservations that have now been thrown into doubt and confusion.
As Elidérico Viegas explained, the drama is exacerbated by the fact that Monarch its own tour operators: Monarch Holidays, Avro and Somewhere2stay.
None of these have yet settled accounts owing to Algarve hotels for August and September.
Viegas predicts the immediate loss – just for holidays that have already been spent – of around €6-7 million.
Says negociosonline, this figure refers to the 80,000 tourists that Monarch flew to the Algarve during the last two months of the summer.
Viegas has put Monarch’s “debts” as “varying from (as little as) €1,500 to €30,000” for every hotel in the Algarve that it used – reaching a global total of around €10 million.
In other words, it’s a case of hotels – under the impression that everything was fine and dandy in a year when tourism was running off the scale – now holding their breaths and hoping, somehow and from somewhere, their accounts will be paid.
