Kuoni cuts 500 jobs
Switzerland's travel industry has been hit by the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States with the country's biggest tour operator, Kuoni, cutting 500 jobs.
Even though most of the jobs will be cut in the United States, Scandinavia and Italy, Switzerland will also be affected.
Kuoni spokeswoman Regula Weyermann said that no Swiss employee will actually be made redundant, however, she is expecting that 20 to 30 jobs will not be filled when vacated.
Of the 6,500 people currently employed worldwide, Kuoni, is planning to make 250 redundant and cut the remaining 250 jobs by not hiring new staff for posts that have been vacated.
Weyermann also said the US market has been most affected by the attacks and most of the jobs would be lost there.
Intrav and T PRO, two Kuoni subsidiaries in the US, have already received their first redundancy notifications.
Profit cuts
In the first six months of this year, Kuoni suffered a big profit cut compared with the same period last year. The company’s earnings dropped by 90 per cent to SFr2.9 billion.
On Tuesday the tour operator will announce its results for the first nine months of 2001. Analysts expect these figures to look quite positive, as the attacks are only expected to have an impact on the results of the last quarter.
For the whole business year Kuoni is expecting to see its turnover increase by 4.8 per cent and its operating profit drop by 50 per cent to SFr86 million.
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