I do wonder if there will be any movement in that direction as a result of the families of those who died in Tunisia, taking Thomson to court. It's a difficult one.

Not wishing to be negative about this (I personally think Thomson were negligent here) but are people going to take any notice when booking a holiday? Many of the hundreds, if not thousands of complaints posted here on HT over the years can be summed up as people "Could not be bothered to read through the small print" rather than be seduced by the blurb about sea and sand.

The current system of the TO deciding how much prominence they give to such warnings needs to be changed and become mandatory. The other area that needs attention is the penalty that the holidaymaker suffers if they try to change their holiday when such problems arise. Yes prices will have gone up (quite normal when holidays are often booked so far in front) but a more sympathetic approach would not go amiss.

I'm intrigued as to why all the flak seems to be directed towards TUI/Thomson but very little is being said about the role of the FCO in this. TOs and insurers usually take their cue from the current FCO advice, so presumably the FCO was not advising against all but essential travel to Tunisia in June 2015 (as it now is) despite the attack on the Bardo Musem in Tunis in March of the same year. However, regardless of what the TOs or FCO was saying, I don't think that I would have been considering visiting Tunisia only 3 months after a similar attack that was clearly aimed at visitors.

Certainly not up to us to say whether a company is negligent given that we don't know all the facts or are legal experts and able to give a determination on that, however there is so much to look at and consider.

The FCO who give advice which all travel companies look at can only give general advice as they monitor changing situations and risks in countries and they ultimately make the UK government decision on travel or not when specific information is received, usually only after there has been some form of incident.

The general public look for holidays to destinations which without any specific alert are less safe than some other destinations and that includes several African nations which really most should know given the current climate we live in, the public need to take some responsibility unless we want to be total nanny state.

If you look at the situation in Egypt where UK citizens are still not being advised to travel, British travel agents have pulled these destinations for safety reasons yet there are still other countries now letting their residents travel there and looking at many different forums there are a lot of British travellers who are moaning that they cannot travel there as they wish to go there.

This is a very awkward situation, passengers wish to travel and many would still travel to a destination that the FCO has issued a vague warning about, travel companies need to make money so they will fulfil demand when possible however the last thing they want is something like this incident or other similar ones as they then need to make urgent changes to thousand of passengers plans which upsets and annoys many travellers regardless of the reasons leading to more complaints.

I send my condolences to those who have lost loved ones, and wish a speedy recovery to those who were injured both physically and mentally.

IMO: Nobody comes out of this with any credit, except the relatives of the deceased souls, who have had to re-live that terrible day during the inquest.
The FCO were more interested in not upsetting the diplomatic relations between the UK & Tunisia and wanted to protect the Tunisian tourist industry, instead of changing the advice to warn tourists of a situation, which they would have had access to via the intelligence services . ..Who pays the wages of these people in the FCO? oh, that's right, the British tax payers.

And then we have TUI, who were advising people that the attack on the Bardo Museum was a 'one off' and the country was safe. Anybody who wanted to cancel or change their holiday were being charged an 'arm and a leg' in penalties. A disgusting policy of putting profit before people's lives.

I've read that Tui's lawyers were trawling through the FB page of a relative of one of the deceased to try and discredit his evidence at the inquest, whereby he stated that in the brochure the FCO's info was on the visa page and you don't need a visa for Tunisia, so he hadn't seen it... Thomson also dropped their prices by 30% after the Bardo attack......Well, everybody loves a bargain don't they.?

Sanji

The incidents at the Bardo and the beach at PEK were horrendous and my heart goes out to those affected. The advice from the FO has now been changed but, whatever they say, whether or not the TO's highlight perceived problems, I think many people will be reluctant to return to Tunisia for the foreseeable future. Only those like me, who have been regular visitors over many years, will continue to visit. The only advantages for us is that there will hopefully be more flights and we should be able to get insurance. This could lead to companies pulling out again "due to lack of demand".

I think you are right Aslemma. Many will be reluctant to return for the first year at least. But then, with attacks happening within Europe, perhaps we might be surprised at the level of uptake,