Thomas Cook is buzzing in trade after the travel services firm announced the completion of its corporate restructuring process. Additionally, CRISIL has reaffirmed the company's credit ratings. Chairman and MD Madhavan Menon said that the company's primary focus of the restructuring was to clean out cross-holdings.

“The skills development business is demerged from Thomas Cook and moved to Quess Corp. Simultaneously we are spinning off Thomas Cook India’s holdings in Quess to the shareholders of Thomas Cook India,” he added.

“At the same time, we are also cleaning out all our cross-holdings and that will require movement of some of the companies but the actual legal structure will remain separate. So consequent to this what you will have is Quess operating as an independent company where Thomas Cook India has no further shareholdings,” added Menon.

Talking about India business, he said, “As far as Thomas Cook India group is concerned, we will be focused on travel as well as some of the portfolio investments that we have in both Sterling Holiday Resorts as well as Digiphoto Entertainment Imaging (DEI).”

About bookings, Menon said, “This entire has been full of events which started with the collapse of Jet Airways followed by the collapse of Cox & Kings, all of which have resulted in a degree of distrust from individual customers. So we did see some impact of that earlier in the year.”

“However, we have tried to take various steps and one of the steps we have taken is new payment plan where you pay 10 percent at the time of booking and 90 percent when you get all your documents just before you leave. This has resulted in an uptick in our bookings and I am hopeful that the yearend will see better bookings,” Menon added.

He further said that we expect summer 2020 to be better versus the summer of 2019.

On the margins front, he said, “Our margins have been stable all the way through and our focus is keeping our margins stable. Our businesses are performing well. The group consolidated number showed a profit. We will continue to book profits as we go forward and I am certain that we will not disappoint our shareholders in this space.”