Member Info for IfTheCapFits

My take on this is to wait until June/July before buying in. All in my opinion of course but have many years in the industry and this is going to be a long recovery.

Points to consider:

Travel bans: Countries will remove lock-down/social distancing but it will be longer before they open up to accepting international tourist flights.

Customer Confidence: Once people have the option to fly it will take time for confidence to return. After the SARS outbreak it took a good 6-8 months for bookings to return to pre-SARS level. This will be longer for COVID. Search for "travel industry recovery after SARS" - lots of good research articles online.

Brand Trust : Most travel companies are not issuing refunds for monies paid but credit vouchers. Jet2 are issuing refunds in full and TUI has gone down the credit voucher route. Those issuing vouchers are having their brands trashed online and are losing valuable customers. Consumers will remember this when it comes to booking for next year.

Supply chain : TUI may be OK as they have 'operator owned' resorts but many local suppliers will not be in business once this is over. eg. smaller hotels/resorts, coach operators, local guides/reps, activity providers etc. It will take time for new/existing local companies to start up, re-hire and upscale to demand.

TUI will get through this due to their size but in what shape will they be in?

There's been lots of talk about EVRH being at risk due to the amount of people adopting VR. I think it works the other way. It's the content available that drives the uptake. If your fave band is performing live and streamed via Melody, that's an incentive to get VR connected, That's why Sky bought the rights to F1, Football etc. If there is a passionate audience who wants to watch the content, you're more than halfway there to sell the platform.

I'm in with first purchase today albeit a small toe in the water... Have a large chunk in HUM so top slices coming in here when the market finally sees HUM's value to balance investment. When CORA releases good news it's a win/win position :-)

Not too bad. Shame they are selling Travelopia though. Some good specialist travel companies in there... a few I have travelled with. A case of a huge plc not wanting to support it's smaller brands maybe?

Nice bounce. Re-structuring at mo and future looks good from where I am sitting...