The Market Harborough-based firm ceased trading on March 16 with Abta citing “financial difficulties”, resulting in the redundancy of all staff – 52 in the UK and 26 in South Africa.

However, on March 17 special interest holidays provider Arena Travel, based in Ipswich, announced its acquisition of The River Cruise Line and Diamond Rail Holidays brands.

Simon Parker, of administrators Antony Batty, confirmed that Arena Travel’s managing director Steve Goodenough was a former director of Diamond Shortbreak Holidays – as stated on Companies House.

Parker also confirmed on Tuesday Diamond Holidays remained for sale.

Concern for Diamond Shortbreak Holidays arose on March 15 when agents noticed that the Diamond Holidays and The River Cruise Line homepages were displaying the same “technical difficulties” error message.

When the company failed it had 7,000 forward bookings protected by Abta, affecting 16,000 passengers.

Abta confirmed that while the holidays were cancelled, the company’s non-flight based package bookings were fully protected.

“These kind of trips formed the majority of the company’s business,” it said in a statement.

Goodenough said Arena Travel’s aim was to “provide the same rail or river cruise holiday on the same date and at the same price to as many of the 5,000 who had booked a holiday for the season ahead as possible”.

Arena Travel told TTG on Monday it was “too early to comment” on job losses as talks were “still ongoing”.

Abta said a small number of customers with flight-based holidays would be protected through the Atol scheme and should contact the CAA.