News

MYTRAVEL founder David Crossland has revealed his personal disappointment in witnessing the holiday empire he created crash down around him.

As the group reported pre-tax losses of £72.8 million and revealed plans to sell one of its specialist businesses by Christmas, Crossland opened his heart to Travel Weekly, describing the year as “the worst in [MyTravel’s] history”.

Starting out as a travel agent tea boy who went on to set up the Airtours business 30 years ago, Crossland was due to retire last week.

But he stayed on after cracks appeared following the events of September 11, with a series of profits warnings and problems with the ompany’s wayward accounting policies.

Crossland - who as of last week is no longer being paid by the company, but has been kept on to advise the new management team - revealed the personal pain he has suffered as events have unfolded over recent months.

“I am very disappointed about these results,” he said.  “I’ve spent 30 years building up a company which once employed two people and now has 25,000 staff. But in the last eight weeks I’ve seen pretty awful things written and not been able to say anything because we have been in a closed period.”

“It’s terrible for the 25,000 people we employ. They are sitting there thinking ‘what the heck is going on?’”