Flight Centre Is Closing Its Gogo Vacations Unit
Dennis Schaal , Skift
February 27th, 2024 at 7:35 PM EST
Flight Centre wanted to cut a money-losing division and refocus on a higher-end luxury client. RIP Gogo Vacations.
Dennis Schaal
Australia-headquartered Flight Centre announced Tuesday it is closing its U.S.-based wholesaler, Gogo Vacations.
The move likely impacts 84 positions in Montvale, New Jersey, — where Gogo was based — according to a New Jersey WARN notice. The layoffs are to take place May 1.
“Given the narrower focus on leisure and corporate growth opportunities, as well as the launch of the Envoyage independent agency and advisor membership network, FLT has made the difficult decision to close its GOGO Vacations brand,” Flight Centre stated.
The U.S. wholesaler, which offered packaged vacations for travel agencies from tour operator partners to destinations in Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe and Tahiti, for example, was a storied U.S. brand in the travel agency community, having been founded in New Jersey in 1951. Flight Centre acquired Gogo , along with Liberty Travel, in 2007.
However, in the first half of fiscal year 2024, Gogo wracked up Australian $7.3 million (U.S. $4.77 million) in non-recurring losses, Flight Centre reported.
A notice on Gogo’s website said it will no longer accept new reservations, although it will service existing bookings.
Flight Centre will be laying off Gogo staff, but it declined to say how many layoffs it is making.
Update: This story was updated to reflect 84 positions in Montvale, New Jersey are impacted by the layoffs.
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Photo credit: A file photo of a Flight Centre store. Source: Flight Centre Flight Centre
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New Zealand tour operators told to pay $7.8 million in fines and reparations over volcanic eruption
FILE - In photo provided by Michael Schade, tourists on a boat look at the eruption of the volcano on White Island, New Zealand, Dec. 9, 2019. Tour booking agents and managers of a New Zealand island where a volcanic eruption killed 22 people in 2019 were ordered Friday, March 1, 2024 to pay nearly $13 million (US$7.8 million) in fines and reparations. (Michael Schade via AP, File)
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Tour booking agents and managers of a New Zealand island where a volcanic eruption killed 22 people in 2019 were ordered Friday to pay nearly $13 million (US$7.8 million) in fines and reparations.
The holding company of the island’s owners, a boat tour operator and three companies that operated helicopter tours had been found guilty of safety breaches at a three-month trial last year.
White Island, the tip of an undersea volcano also known by its Indigenous Māori name Whakaari, was a popular tourist destination before the eruption. There were 47 tourists and tour guides on the island when superheated steam erupted on Dec. 9, 2019, killing some people instantly and leaving survivors with agonizing burns .
“There is no way to measure the emotional harm survivors and affected families have endured and will continue to endure,” Judge Evangelos Thomas said during the sentencing in an Auckland court. “Reparation in a case like this can be no more than token recognition of that harm.”
“No review of prevailing reparation levels conducted by any other court contemplates emotional harm of the scale and nature that is present in this case. Greater awards are appropriate.”
Previously, a three-month, judge-only trial against 13 groups had seen six plead guilty and six other having charges against them dismissed. The charges were brought by regulators and carried fines as a maximum penalty.
The final remaining defendant in the trial was Whakaari Management Ltd. which was found guilty on one charge in October last year.
At Friday’s sentencing hearing, Thomas was particularly scathing towards the shareholders of WML, the holding company for the island’s owners: Andrew, James and Peter Buttle, who he said had “appeared to have profited handsomely” from tours to the island, despite the company claiming no assets or a bank account to hold funds.
While conceding he could not make orders against the individual owners, he said the ruling did not relieve WML from its $636,000 fine or its share of the reparations for the victims and their families of $2.97 million.
“This case, like many others, sadly reveals how simply corporate structures can be used to thwart meaningful responses to safety breaches,” Judge Thomas said. “There may be no commercial basis for doing so, but many would argue there is an inescapable moral one.”
“We wait to see what the Buttles will do. The world is watching.”
The specific reparation sums awarded to victims and the families of those who died was suppressed for publication by the court.
The last remaining defendant, New Zealand scientific agency GNS Science, the government agency that monitors volcanic activity, was fined $33,000 for failing to have processes to share risk assessments with its contracted helicopter pilots. No GNS staff were on the island at the time of the eruption and the agency was not ordered to make any reparations.
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New Zealand tour operators told to pay $7.8 million in fines and reparations over volcanic eruption
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Tour booking agents and managers of a New Zealand island where a volcanic eruption killed 22 people in 2019 were ordered Friday to pay nearly $13 million (US$7.8 million) in fines and reparations.
The holding company of the island’s owners, a boat tour operator and three companies that operated helicopter tours had been found guilty of safety breaches at a three-month trial last year.
White Island, the tip of an undersea volcano also known by its Indigenous Māori name Whakaari, was a popular tourist destination before the eruption. There were 47 tourists and tour guides on the island when superheated steam erupted on Dec. 9, 2019, killing some people instantly and leaving survivors with agonizing burns .
“There is no way to measure the emotional harm survivors and affected families have endured and will continue to endure,” Judge Evangelos Thomas said during the sentencing in an Auckland court. “Reparation in a case like this can be no more than token recognition of that harm.”
“No review of prevailing reparation levels conducted by any other court contemplates emotional harm of the scale and nature that is present in this case. Greater awards are appropriate.”
Previously, a three-month, judge-only trial against 13 groups had seen six plead guilty and six other having charges against them dismissed. The charges were brought by regulators and carried fines as a maximum penalty.
The final remaining defendant in the trial was Whakaari Management Ltd. which was found guilty on one charge in October last year.
At Friday’s sentencing hearing, Thomas was particularly scathing towards the shareholders of WML, the holding company for the island’s owners: Andrew, James and Peter Buttle, who he said had “appeared to have profited handsomely” from tours to the island, despite the company claiming no assets or a bank account to hold funds.
While conceding he could not make orders against the individual owners, he said the ruling did not relieve WML from its $636,000 fine or its share of the reparations for the victims and their families of $2.97 million.
“This case, like many others, sadly reveals how simply corporate structures can be used to thwart meaningful responses to safety breaches,” Judge Thomas said. “There may be no commercial basis for doing so, but many would argue there is an inescapable moral one.”
“We wait to see what the Buttles will do. The world is watching.”
The specific reparation sums awarded to victims and the families of those who died was suppressed for publication by the court.
The last remaining defendant, New Zealand scientific agency GNS Science, the government agency that monitors volcanic activity, was fined $33,000 for failing to have processes to share risk assessments with its contracted helicopter pilots. No GNS staff were on the island at the time of the eruption and the agency was not ordered to make any reparations.
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Nyc tour boat duo ‘recklessly’ overbooked vessel that capsized in hudson river, killing 7-year-old and woman: prosecutors.
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Two tour boat operators were charged in the deaths of a 7-year-old boy and his aunt who were killed in 2022 when their speeding, overcrowded ship capsized in the Hudson River off Manhattan.
Richard Cruz, 32, and Jaime Pinilla Gomez, 35, were arrested Thursday in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and face up to 10 years behind bars on one count of misconduct and neglect of a ship officer resulting in death, according to federal prosecutors.
Gomez was operating the 24-foot Yamaha AR-240 jet boat named Stimulus Money on July 12, 2022, when it flipped and ejected all 13 passengers into the water off the coast of the Big Apple.
Cruz had just bought the vessel three months earlier, and the boat tour had not been certified or credentialed by the US Coast Guard.
The duo had exceeded the vessel’s maximum allowable capacity and Gomez was recklessly operating the boat at a “high rate of speed” during a Small Craft Advisory in high winds and heavy seas, prosecutors said.
Gomez, an “insufficiently experienced mariner,” had “rapidly accelerated” one of the boat’s engines before the craft capsized, and “failed to properly wear a safety device that should be worn around the pilot’s wrist or life vest,” a failure that allowed the vessel to keep running even after the captain was ejected, according to a press release.
As ferries and emergency vessels swarmed the disaster scene near Pier 84, NYPD and FDNY divers found young Julian Vasquez and his aunt Lindelia Vasquez trapped under the boat and unconscious.
Officials ruled the pair — who had been visiting New York from Florida and Colombia — had drowned.
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“Federal regulations and safety protocols exist to ensure that captains and operators of commercial vessels keep passengers safe,” said US Attorney Damian Williams.
“The defendants allegedly flouted those regulations, recklessly disregarded safety protocols, operated the vessel at an unsafe speed in hazardous conditions, and overloaded the vessel with too many passengers onboard. And the result was tragic — a young boy and a woman were trapped under the vessel and drowned after the vessel capsized.”
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Taiwan Official Says Tour Operators Could Help Ease Cross-Strait Tensions - TaiwanPlus News
Posted: March 7, 2024 | Last updated: March 7, 2024
Ahead of Taiwan's ban on tour groups going to China being reinstated in June, Taiwan's transport minister has ruffled feathers by suggesting tour providers could do more to help ease cross-strait tensions.
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White Island volcano eruption: NZ court orders tour operators and island managers to pay $10m
Court found those responsible for tour had not conducted adequate risk assessments ahead of deadly eruption
A New Zealand court has ordered the tour booking agents and managers of an island where a volcanic eruption killed 22 people to pay survivors more than NZ$10m ($6.1m) and fined them around NZ$2.6m.
Tour operators White Island Tours, Volcanic Air Safaris, Kahu New Zealand and Aerius, along with the corporate owner of the island, Whakaari Management Ltd, were found to have not sufficiently ensured the safety of visitors to the island, court filings showed.
There were 47 people on White Island, also known by the Māori name of Whakaari, when the volcano erupted on 9 December 2019. Many of the survivors were badly burnt by searing gas and ash. Most of the victims were international tourists from countries including Australia, the US and Malaysia.
Whakaari Management must pay compensation of NZ$4.88m, while White Island Tours must pay NZ$5m and Volcanic Air Safaris NZ$$330,000, Judge Evangelos Thomas said on Friday in his judgment in the District Court of Auckland.
The prosecutor for workplace regulator Worksafe had said during the hearing that the tour operators indicated they did not have the ability to pay fines but argued the judge should impose financial penalties even if they were not paid.
Though the tour operators did conduct risk assessments, they were fundamentally inadequate, Thomas said.
“The safety information tour operators provided to their paying customers was wholly inadequate, not sufficiently informing paying customers about the hazards, the risk, the consequences of an eruption,” the judge said.
The five companies involved were either in liquidation, no longer trading, were in a weak financial position or had no assets, the judgment said.
White Island Tours and VASL have insurance cover of NZ$5,000,000 and NZ$300,000 respectively to pay reparations to victims, though they and the other three companies did not appear to be in a position to pay the remaining fines and compensation, the judgment added.
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Space Travel
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Space Travel is DMC, based in Russia, Moscow.
We provide different type of services from booking transfers to building full itinerary for your trip.
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Homepage | GOGO Worldwide Vacations. From the entire team at GOGO Vacations, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to the travel advisor community and our industry partners for over 70 years of unwavering loyalty. Your partnership and collaboration is deeply appreciated and we wish you much success in your future endeavors!
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The 2019 New Zealand volcano eruption killed 22 people and gravely injured 25 others.
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Ready for 2024: boek nú jouw ultieme jongerenvakantie met de tofste feesten & leukste activiteiten bij GOGO! ☀ Griekenland, Spanje, Portugal, Bulgarije ☀
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Tour booking agents and managers of a New Zealand island where a volcanic eruption killed 22 people in 2019 were ordered Friday to pay nearly $13 million (US$7.8 ...
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Two boat tour operators are charged with causing the death of a 7-year-old boy and a 48-year-old woman when their vessel capsized in the Hudson River off the shores of Manhattan in 2022.
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