15,000 tourists stranded after Thomas Cook collapse

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About 15,000 tourists have been stranded in Cyprus as a result of the collapse of Thomas Cook travel giant, a tourist official said on Monday.

Officials said that the tourists came mostly from Britain, but there were also people from the Scandinavian countries and Germany.

Haris Loizides, the president of the hotelier's association, said that Thomas Cook sent to Cyprus about 250,000 tourists a year, or 7 percent of total tourists holidaying on the eastern Mediterranean island this year.

He added that about 45,000 people had booked their holidays in Cyprus with Thomas Cook for the last four months of this year.

Assistant Minister of Tourism Savvas Perdios called an emergency meeting of tourism stakeholders to examine all aspects of the problem, such as how to care for trapped tourists, ways to repatriate them and the consequences for Cypriot tourism.

British authorities said that they have drawn a plan to repatriate hundreds of thousands of British tourists from around the world in a process that could last until the end of the first week in October.

Loizides said that this would mean that hoteliers have to care for Thomas Cook clients for more than two weeks until all people were repatriated. He also said that the cost to hotels from the collapse of Thomas Cook could come to 50 million euros, as hoteliers were not paid for the peak months of July and August.

Perdios said that his department had expected 2019 to be a very difficult year for tourism, but the collapse of Thomas Cook would deal a serious blow to the economy, given its high degree of dependence on income from tourism.

Thomas Cook, one of the world's oldest travel companies, collapsed on Monday.

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