Thomas Cook ‘put profits above safety’
Holiday firm savaged by report into children’s deaths in Corfu
THOMAS Cook put money before the safety of customers, according to a damning review triggered by the deaths of two children.
Bobby and Christi Shepherd died at one of the travel company’s resorts while on holiday in Corfu with their family in October 2006.
The youngsters, aged six and seven, were overcome by carbon monoxide fumes from a faulty boiler at the Louis Corcyra Beach Hotel on the Greek holiday island.
An inquest earlier this year found Thomas Cook had breached its duty of care, and that they had been unlawfully killed.
Now, an independent review ordered by the company has concluded that parts of the business put financial priorities ahead of customers’ needs, including health and safety. The review, conducted by former Sainsbury’s chief Justin King, also criticised the way the company dealt with the grieving family of the two children.
Bobby and Christi had been on a halfterm break with their father, Neil Shepherd, and his partner when they died. For almost nine years, Thomas Cook repeatedly denied any wrong-doing and the chief executive, Peter Fankhauser, refused to apologise, even when giving evidence at the inquest.
It subsequently, emerged that the German-owned concern had received some £1.5million compensation from the hotel chain responsible for the incident. It was not until after the inquest and the resulting public condemnation that Mr Fankhauser made a personal apology and agreed to donate the money to the charity Unicef.
Describing the background of the relationship between Thomas Cook and the family, Mr King said: ‘Decisions were often not taken in the thoughtful and caring way you would expect from a company such as Thomas Cook.’
He added: ‘The fact that this tragic situation spanned almost nine years is testimony to how much legal, rather than human, considerations dominated the landscape.’
He said the company’s approaches to the family ‘were intermittent, sometimes illtimed and often ill-judged.
‘Conversely, approaches from the family met with untimely and somewhat abrupt responses, or, in the case of Mr Shepherd’s attempts to arrange a meeting with the company in 2013, no response at all.’
Mr Fankhauser has now met with the family, including the children’s mother, Sharon Wood, several times. As a result, Thomas Cook has agreed to pay the family’s
‘Intermittent, ill-timed and ill-judged’
legal fees and help set up a charity, The Safer Tourism Foundation. It is also collaborating with Mrs Wood to develop a ‘bereavement help pack’, which the review recommended should be widely circulated.
The report said that a system set up by Thomas Cook to cope with a crisis or incident ‘appears to work well’. But it found: ‘Individual profit centres such as the airline and destination management [divisions] have a tendency to protect cost.
‘Their approach is closer to “What’s the minimum we can do to solve the problem?” rather than “What should we do to make this as good as we can?”.
It added: ‘There is an over-emphasis on financial and reputational risk.’
Thomas Cook said parts of the report made for uncomfortable reading, but promised to act on the recommendations. Mr Fankhauser admitted: ‘It took us nine years to correct the mistakes of the past and to do what everyone would have expected of us.’
The children’s parents welcomed the company’s ‘new proactive approach in addressing the mistakes they made’.