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Holidays4U, a tour operator based in Brighton, has collapsed, leaving over 12,000 tourists abroad.

The company, also trading as Aegean Flights, sold package holidays and flights to Turkey (many with the budget airline Onur Air). The company had an annual turnover of £35 million but in common with much of the travel industry had been hard hit by the recession over the last two years.

As well as this being bad news for travellers currently in Turkey, the company also had 50,000 bookings for holidays in the future, leaving many people’s travel plans in disarray just as the school holidays get under way.

According to ABTA there should be no problem with people currently in Turkey getting back to the UK at the right time but just whether they will end up where they started from is another matter.

Holidays4U operated out of numerous UK airports including Belfast, Cardiff, Bristol, Gatwick, Edinburgh and Glasgow but, according to ABTA, the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) may experience difficulty getting passengers on flights back to their airport of departure.

It is a distinct possibility, as has happened in the past with tour operators going bust, that hoteliers will ask holiday makers to pay for their accommodation again and travellers are advised to keep all paperwork and submit a claim to the CAA for their consideration.

All future bookings with the company are now cancelled but passengers should get their money back through ATOL. This will come as scant consolation for people looking forward to their holiday, in particular those due to fly out tonight from Manchester airport to Dalaman.