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New owner of Thomas Cook plans to hire another 1,500 staff

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New owner of Thomas Cook plans to hire another 1,500 staff

After Hays Travel, bought Thomas Cook following its collapse back in October and saved 2,330 Thomas Cook employees from losing their job, they have now announced to hire another 1,500 staff.

Hays plans to hire another 200 people at its head office in Sunderland, an extra 500 to handle the foreign exchange and an apprentice at each of its 737 branches.

John Hays, managing director of Hays Travel said:

We’re further increasing staffing to ensure we have the highest customer service levels across all of our stores and our head office functions.

The former Thomas Cook managers have said the biggest difference for them is being empowered and valued, as an independent travel agent they are not tied to certain products or scripts and they feel trusted.

This hiring campaign will increase Hays’ workforce to 5,700 people.

Hays reacted to the news of Thomas Cook by buying its 555 shops and has now reopened 450 of those stores. Mr Hays said that when the company saved the jobs of the former Thomas Cook employees, it was a very emotional day with former Thomas Cook staff crying when they found out their jobs had been saved.

At the time of the collapse, Mr Hays said:

Our staff were devastated to hear about Thomas Cook and we all immediately felt we wanted to help.

In the last two weeks we have already employed or offered jobs to around 600 former Thomas Cook colleagues, and it has been a very emotional experience for them.

Now that we are able to re-open the shops, we are looking forward to welcoming many more people who share our passion for the travel industry, into our family business.

Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.

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