Gary Lewis: TTNG feared losing up to 70% of members

Lewis said like many other travel businesses, the crisis left the TTNG scrambling to establish "how on earth" its 1,000-plus members would be able to survive without revenue.

"The Thomas Cook failure changed what was going on in our world," Lewis told a TTG Face To Face on Wednesday (1 July). "Strategically, what happened off the back of that had a massive impact on our perspective.

"But the crisis has changed everything again. Everyone was in fear of what the future held. That was before the government loans, before the furlough scheme.

"[During] those first two to three weeks, once we got control of our own fears, we breathed, sat down, made our strategy, and decided what we should be doing to support every single member in coming through this crisis.

"Then we thought about what we needed to do to survive if we were going to lose 50%, 60%, 70% of our members which, in those first three weeks, we were certainly predicting – how on earth could a large amount of our travel industry, not just our members, survive if we had no revenue for six months, 12 months, 18 months? None of us knew."