On The Beach Group reported a 1% decrease in profit to £92.0 million for the full year 2019 that ended September 30, partly due to the demise of Thomas Cook.
Profit before tax declined 26%, down from £26.1 million in 2018 to £19.4 million 2019.
The collapse of Thomas Cook in September resulted in a £7.1 million revenue loss due to refunds, costs associated with helping customers organize alternative travel arrangements and lost margin on canceled bookings.
Says CEO Simon Cooper: “The failure of TCG has led to a material shift in market dynamics as it had a 20% share of beach holiday passengers and approximately 20% of the seat capacity to beach holiday destinations.
“This has created a significant short-term lack of seat capacity as well as an unprecedented opportunity in the medium term to gain share.”
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The U.K.-based online travel retailer also credited Brexit uncertainty for affecting short haul beach holidays.
Revenue increased 35% year-over-year from £104.3 million to £140.4 million, which the company attributed to the full year contribution of Classic Collection.
The company’s OTB segment, which includes the OnTheBeach and Sunshine.co.uk websites, recorded a 1% increase in revenue to £90.3 million.
Revenue from the international segment, which includes ebeach.se, ebeach.no and ebeach.dk, decreased 13% to £1.4 million.
The Classic Collection segment reported a 7% decrease to £55 million.
Marketing expenses dropped from £40.4 million in 2018 to £36.3 million in 2019.
Cooper says that despite “a difficult general economic climate with the prolonged uncertainty regarding Brexit and the related currency impacts,” he was “pleased with the Group's performance.”
“Whilst the consumer environment will continue to be challenging, we remain confident in the ability of our resilient and flexible business model to significantly increase our market share in the medium term.”