BUSINESS NEWS


Truly Travel was prosecuted for failing to refund customers due to Covid-era cancellations


CMA’s action ‘torpedoed’ Truly Travel and Teletext


Prosecution denied company chance to ‘trade way out’, source claims. By Ian Taylor


Industry sources have accused the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of “torpedoing” Teletext Holidays and parent Truly Travel which were wound up in December. The CMA won a High Court


ruling at the end of February that Truly broke the law by failing to refund package holiday customers for Covid-era cancellations. The ruling was the culmination of a CMA prosecution launched in October. But according to a senior industry


source, it was the CMA’s action which finished the company. The source


48 17 MARCH 2022


told Travel Weekly: “Truly could have traded out of it. But the criminal prosecution had a huge knock-on effect. It torpedoed the company.” A second source pointed out the


CAA renewed the company’s Atol in September 2021 and said: “The CMA wanted to make an example. It was shocked when the business failed.” Truly Travel owner Kumar Edara


has declined to comment on the failure. But the sources point out the company could not pay the outstanding refunds “because the money released to airlines, to Ryanair


and others, was not refunded”. The first source said: “The business hadn’t earned any money for 18 months. Its argument with the CMA was ‘We can’t raise the money, we can only wait for the money to come back’. “As soon as there was a criminal


prosecution, it was shot trying to raise money. The prosecution was going to cost £2 million to defend.” The second source noted: “The CAA renewed the Atol on the basis


Continued on page 46 travelweekly.co.uk


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