(Adds quotes, background, context)
TUNIS, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Thomas Cook owes Tunisian hotels
60 million euros ($66 million)for stays in July and August,
Tourism Minister Rene Trabelsi told Reuters on Monday, adding
that 4,500 British Thomas Cook customers are still in the
country.
Tourism is a vital sector for Tunisia's economy and a key
source of foreign currency, and the government had expected
another 50,000 Thomas Cook customers to visit this year, he
added.
"I will have a meeting on Tuesday with the British Embassy
in Tunisia and the hotel owners to see how debt could be
redeemed," Trabelsi said.
The collapse of Thomas Cook, one of Britain's oldest
companies, has stranded more than half a million tourists around
the world. It ran hotels, resorts and airlines for 19 million
people a year in 16 countries.
Britain's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said the government
had a fleet of planes ready to bring home British customers over
the next two weeks and they should not go to the airport until
they had been informed they were due on a return flight.
The British regulator is also contacting hotels hosting
Thomas Cook customers to tell them that they will be paid by the
government, through an insurance scheme.
Some British tourists said a hotel in Tunisia briefly
stopped them leaving on Saturday night, demanding they settle
bills that Thomas Cook owed for their stay. The Tunisian
government said it was a misunderstanding.
Major European tour operators only started to return to
Tunisia last year after militants killed 39 tourists, mostly
British, in an attack on a beach in Sousse and 21 people in the
Bardo National Museum in the capital Tunis.
Tourism accounts for around 8% of Tunisia's economy and
employs 400,000 people. It had expected to receive a record 9
million tourists by the end of 2019 after recovering from the
impact of the 2015 attacks.
($1 = 0.9103 euros)
(Reporting by Tarek Amara; writing by Angus McDowall; editing
by Jason Neely and Louise Heavens)
