The bankruptcy of Thomas Cook has had major effects in several of Europe's tourist nations. In Greece, there is concern among hotel owners that they will not be paid for summer hotel bookings.

“Right now we are in a very difficult situation,” says the head of the Greek Hotel Association, Grigoris Tassios, to the Greek public service company Ert.

– The biggest problems are on Rhodes, Kos, Crete, and Corfu, he says.

That is where the majority of the approximately 50,000 people who traveled to Greece with Thomas Cook are located.

The ever-growing Greek tourism industry broke a record last year with 33 million visitors and is an incredibly important source of income, accounting for over a fifth of the country's GDP.

The travel giant's bankruptcy now risks hitting hotel owners hard - many have not had time to get paid for the last two months' bookings - money that is now at risk of burning through the roof, says Grigoris Tassios.

In Crete, around 70 percent of hotel owners have collaborated with Thomas Cook. There are now 20,000 tourists who do not know how to get home, but according to Greece's Tourism Minister Charis Theocharis, extra flights have been deployed to enable people to get home as smoothly as possible. The authorities will also review how they can support hotel owners who have been affected.

Other countries are also struggling to find a solution for the stranded tourists. In the Canary Islands, for example, there are around 30,000 Thomas Cook travelers, in Cyprus there are 15,000 and in Turkey 21,000.

There, the authorities say that payments to Turkish hotel owners are guaranteed under an agreement with British authorities - and at the same time warn that measures will be taken against hotels that demand payment directly from guests or threaten to evict them.

Source: sverigesradio.se