倒産→夜逃げみたいです

随分前ですが、バンコクの日本人向けに航空券を売っていた会社のひとつが倒産夜逃げして、それまで買っていた別の一社は存続していました。航空券を受け取りながら従業員と、「ここは大丈夫ですよね？」と話しながら、「まさか・・」という感じて対応されました。その数ヶ月後です。代表が夜逃げしたのは。

Hotel Tonightのような商売はやはりリスクがあったのか、集客のために無理をしていたのか。数年前のてるみくらぶのときもそうだったのですが、安さの裏には訳がある。商品受け取りと金銭授受との間にタイムラグがある旅行業界は前世紀から、この詐欺（てるみくらぶはそうだと思います）や夜逃げの常習犯ですので。英国では旅行業界におけるオンライン詐欺が横行していて社会問題となっています。

先の続き

Other media, including the Straits Times in Singapore, have also failed to get a response from HotelQuickly.

HotelQuickly’s parent company is Rising Sun Merchant Services, based in Singapore. It also has an operation in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Most of its bookings were made not direct with hotels but through intermediaries.

This is at odds with what the agency tells customers on its website: “As soon as a booking is made in the app or the website, our system automatically emails the hotel’s reservations department.

“Our team also calls the hotel’s front desk to personally confirm the reservation in some cases.”

The booking agency was set up to emulate the successful firm, Hotel Tonight.

The Athens-based online travel agent, Tripsta, located in Athens, has also closed down. It depended for business on price-comparison websites, and offered very low fares in order to secure bookings.

Accounts of HotelQuickly’s operations received by The Independent suggest some similarities with “bust-outs”, where travel agents take in payments for flight tickets but never pay the airline.