Booking or Brexit. What caused the downfall of one of the world's largest tour operators? On September 23rd, the United Kingdom woke up to the news that Thomas Cook, the country's oldest company in the tourism and travel sector, had entered liquidation proceedings due to a lack of the financing needed to continue operating. In short, it went bankrupt. Thomas Cook, yet another zombie company, carries a debt of over 1.7 billion pounds. Efforts by European states to repatriate 1,500 British tourists and 3,500 of other nationalities began that week. The total cost of repatriating all those affected by the company's bankruptcy will be 100 million pounds.
The big question analysts are asking is whether it was Brexit or political and economic uncertainty. After all, what was it that killed the company? Or is this a natural death process for a declining business model threatened by the lower costs of companies better adapted to modern technology, such as Booking and Airbnb. Thomas Cook survived 2 world wars but not Brexit, Bernstein analysts were saying this morning, recalling the company's 180-year history. Of course, analysts and the press in general would not miss the opportunity of a major British company's bankruptcy to blame Brexit, which, incidentally, has not yet happened. But since when do we need facts to sustain a narrative? If you serve the narrative, well, that's all that matters.
Yes, the company is old, yes, it survived the 2 world wars, but its bankruptcy has nothing to do with Brexit. The problem is that it is very difficult to survive in a space where your business model makes your services both expensive and unnecessary at the same time.
Travel agencies sell credibility. Not long ago, people were afraid to visit places they did not know, and travel agencies served as a kind of guide that sold packages to those destinations. We were buying near-certainty that everything would go smoothly. They offered us the cheapest flights, the best value for money in terms of accommodation and tours to destinations you had never visited. They sold peace of mind.
The problem now (for them) is that you do this yourself. We can visit websites that compare prices for airline tickets, hotels, car rentals, tours, tips — in short, everything related to that destination.
The bankruptcy of Thomas Cook is not an isolated incident. It is part of a process that began with the development of the internet.
With Web 1.0, we had static websites, Hotmail, Netscape, Napster, Yahoo, news portals that dealt a severe blow to print newspapers. File-sharing programs, such as eMule, which put an end to music CD stores.
Web 2.0 has enabled interactive websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and applications like WhatsApp. It is revolutionizing communications and transportation, breaking the monopoly of taxis, bus companies, free-to-air television, and telephone carriers.
The next step will be Web 3.0, which promises to decentralize the transfer of money between individuals through cryptocurrencies, likely doing away with notary offices, bureaucratic processing agents, accountants, lawyers, and banks as we know them today, along with much of government interference — this is because it is very difficult to monitor and tax transactions between people's mobile phones when data does not pass through a single server, as is the case with blockchain, a highly secure technology that uses blocks of information stored across multiple servers around the world, which come together in a complex combination only at the moment of delivering the information.
There are technologies that are even harder to trace, where data does not even pass through servers. Transactions are made solely through mobile phones. Such is the case with Arcade City, an app where your phone communicates directly with the driver's phone app, with no central server.
On the horizon, new ways of doing business far from the reach of governments are taking shape. What does this new world hold in store? Will it self-regulate or will it require the intervention of a central authority? Will the sharp drop in tax revenue generate chaos, or if money stays in the hands of the people will they enjoy a better standard of living and need less from governments? These are questions that, for now, remain unanswered.