The DRSF recently announced that of the 135,000 applications submitted so far, more than 120,000 have already been processed. This is confirmed by Gregor Kadanka, travel agency chairman Austrian Chamber of Commerce (WKO). “Basically, it can be said that the majority of customers who originally booked with FTI received their deposits back in the summer through their travel agency or used them for new bookings.”
That affects more than 90 percent of customers who did not have to wait for the DRSF. Since the customer in Austria usually pays to the travel agency and not directly to the tour operator (as in Germany), the majority of the money in this country is not with FTI, but with the travel agencies, who were therefore able to quickly refund the money.
“Only those funds that have already been collected from the travel agencies by FTI are now cases for the DRSF,” says Kadanka. For these cases, it took the DRSF quite a long time to set up an IT-supported process, so this has only recently been available for Austria. In addition, this process is quite complex because the DRSF acts very cautiously and requires a lot of information and documents. This also delays the process. There are also one or two cases more complicated stored and therefore longer for the Clarification need, says Kadanka. “Due to the clear legal situation, it is clear that in the end every customer will be compensated.”
Attorney involved
This also confirms local travel agencies. “The majority of our customers received their deposits back very quickly and in most cases used them directly for new bookings,” says TUI Austria. However, there are also a few complicated individual cases in which the clarification unfortunately takes longer.
Ruefa took a slightly different route. “We have compensated all of our customers,” says managing director Michele Fanton. Means Declarations of Assignment Ruefa is now trying to get the funds back from the DRSF. “For this purpose, a lawyer was hired in Germany who submitted the applications in writing.”