Travel Weekly Blog

Update: Cambuslangtravel.com now has a bare-bones announcement and a link to ABTA. But the criticisms below still stand... (2pm, August 27)

Cambuslang Travel, which isn't that well known nationally but is a sizeable Scottish agency, has gone down, leaving hundreds of potential lost bookings.

"Fear grips East Kilbride holidaymakers," says a local paper. Let's hope none of those worried holidaymakers tried going to Cambuslang Travel's website for clarification or reassurance, because they would have got this:

Bobcat.

Refresh the site and you'll get another word on roughly the same theme - cue two minutes of chatter as colleagues piped up with "I've got 'jackal'", "I've got 'elf'" and so on. What fun.

Or rather, what an insult to customers caught in the company's wake.

Chloe Berman, who covered the story for us, wrote that

Frustrated holidaymakers have been phoning the company and visiting the two retail shops in Cambuslang and East Kilbride with no success

...so things are no better outside the digital realm. So much for the new age of communication. I've said it before, but it's about the people, not the tools.

If you're affected, your best bet is to contact ABTA, or speak to your credit card provider about recovering your money.