Tourists stranded in the Caribbean after collapse of Swiss operator

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

BASEL, Switzerland (AFP): Holiday-makers left stranded in the Caribbean following to the collapse late last week of a Swiss tour operator, Avione, have started to return home, officials said Monday.

An Air France flight is expected to arrive in Paris on Wednesday carrying tourists who had been stranded in the Dominican Republic following the tour operator's bankruptcy filing last Friday.

According to an Avione employee, many tourists abandoned on the island had been forced to buy their own plane tickets to fly back to Europe.

The failed tour operator was unable to say Monday how many people were still stranded, but Switzerland's foreign ministry said about 20 Swiss nationals were stuck at a hotel in the northern part of the Dominican Republic.

The majority of tourists left stranded by Avione are French - about 138 people according to the French authorities - and German.

Other Avione customers abandoned in Cuba have returned, the Avione employee said.

In the Dominican Republic, one French tourist declared that "men in uniform" came to the hotels to force stranded tourists to pay their bills.

Avione announced on Friday that it would terminate operations with immediate effect due to liquidity problems after its banks cut credit lines to the firm.

In Basel, 16 staff lost their jobs.

In Mulhouse, France the travel agency Nouveaux Espaces set up a crisis centre on Friday that has received "more than one hundred" calls from customers worried about the collapse of Avione, said a staff member there.

"We are in the worst crisis situation I have ever seen," the employee said.

"We are doing the best we can to assure people who are stranded as well as their families at home who have called us," he continued.

"By Thursday all of the agency's customers" who have travelled to Cuba and the Dominican Republic will have returned, said the employee.

"We have had to take charge in certain cases where hotels have refused to give passports back to travelers because the tour operator has not paid them," he said.

It will cost an "astronomical amount" to cover the costs of the hotel bills, extra nights of accommodation and new return plane tickets, he admitted. 

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