The Gran Canarian businessmen who have hotel branding agreements with FTI with its Meeting Point or Labranda brands have agreed to tell Maspalomas24H that "we are up to date, we are collecting the rents." This is a result of the fact that the guarantee fund for the tourism sector was practically undamaged by the bankruptcy of the German tour operator FTI. This was stated by the head of the guarantee fund, Marco Amos, on Friday in an interview with the tourist magazine Travel Inside. There are two hotels in Las Palmas and one in the south of Gran Canaria, as well as apartment complexes.
This year, the guarantee fund had to reimburse three claims, one of which did not result in any reimbursement claims, Amos said. The most important case was the bankruptcy of FTI Touristik AG, which resulted in 450 cases of repayment from the guarantee fund. 150 cases were traced back to Bigxtra Touristik, which was a white label producer for large retailers such as Lidl.
On 3 June 2024, FTI Group, the third largest package travel provider in Europe, filed for bankruptcy. Six months later, the DRSF has processed the vast majority of the 145.000 refund requests submitted to date and has provided refunds totalling more than €190 million to consumers. The final phase of the refund process now begins: once existing requests have been refunded, it is now a matter of all other consumers also submitting their requests. The DRSF therefore invites all eligible consumers who have not yet been contacted or who have not yet been able to submit a request for other reasons to register online via the open refund portal or to register for the postal refund process via the service hotline.
It is unclear how many of the theoretically eligible consumers are still waiting for their money. This is due, among other things, to the fact that so-called agency chargebacks are not uncommon in the travel sector, where deposits for booked trips remain with the travel agency until shortly before the start of the trip. Some consumers may have already received their deposits back through so-called chargebacks from credit card providers and similar mechanisms from other payment service providers.
Furthermore, it is now becoming increasingly clear that, even via the agency portal provided by the court-appointed insolvency administrator Axel Bierbach, only a few travel agencies communicate the addresses of consumers who booked via FTI Reisen's business partners. The DRSF has therefore appealed to all consumers who have booked a holiday package with FTI Touristik GmbH or BigXtra Touristik GmbH, believe that they are entitled to a refund and have not yet been contacted by the DRSF: Please register for the refund process via the online portal or with the DRSF service hotline at +49 (0)30 78954770.
This also applies to those consumers who have already registered a claim for the insolvency desk with the insolvency administrator. The insolvency procedure does not replace the DRSF's refund process. Although consumers can only assert a claim once, insolvency proceedings are likely to drag on for years and ultimately result in only small refunds of funds to creditors. Therefore, anyone who has booked a package holiday or travel services associated with FTI should submit a refund request to the DRSF. This is the quickest and safest way to get your deposits back.
