On Wednesday, the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority will publish guidelines on how consumers can claim compensation for cancelled Detur package holidays. The travel agency has given a deposit to the Swedish Chamber of Commerce, which will be used to pay the compensation.
Compensation claims are handled by the Kammarkollegiet, a body under the Swedish Ministry of Finance, which performs some of the same tasks as the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority.
In addition to the Swedish parent company, Detur Finland, Detur companies operating in other Nordic countries and Nordco Tours, a travel agency belonging to the same group, have also filed for bankruptcy.
The security required by the Package Travel Act has been deposited in Sweden. It will reimburse consumers for travel services they have paid for in advance and not received.
According to Kammarkolliegiet, the processing of claims is backlogged, and refunds may have to wait up to six months. If the trip has been paid for with a credit card, you can also claim a refund from the credit company. At that time, you will probably also get a refund faster.
The Consumer Agency will negotiate with representatives of Kammarkollegiet on Tuesday afternoon about the details of returns, and instructions in Finnish will be published on Wednesday.
Deturi’s own website stopped working on Tuesday afternoon, so it is impossible to get information from there.
Did Detur attract tourists with exceptionally cheap holidays?
Detur still sold exceptionally cheap all-inclusive trips in the summer, where you could get a one-week travel package to Turkey for 150-200 euros.
At that time, the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority started receiving notifications about trips that the company apparently did not even intend to take. Consumers had to wait a long time for payments that had already been paid, and not all of them have been returned yet.
The corona years were Deturi’s destiny. In 2020, the sale of trips stopped almost completely, and the company’s turnover fell to 559 thousand euros, while the previous year the turnover was more than 25 million. The loss was almost 900 thousand euros.
In 2021, the corona restrictions were already partially lifted, and the company was able to start production of trips on a small scale again. The company’s turnover rose to 2.8 million euros, but at the same time losses grew to almost a million euros.
Part of the reason for the large losses was the sale of exceptionally cheap trips that did not cover the expenses incurred in producing the trips. The company stopped organizing trips in September 2022.
According to the press release sent by Detur to Yle, the immediate cause of the bankruptcy is running out of money because the bank and credit card companies have not made the payments due to the company.
In December 2019, Detur Holding Ltd., registered in Malta, was registered as the owner of Detur.