Confidential data is said to have flowed to FTI for years.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf Extensive data breaches in the tourism industry took longer than previously assumed. This was shown by the preliminary results of an investigation by the law firm CMS Hasche Sigle, as announced on Thursday by Raiffeisen-Tours-Kooperation (RTK), which is at the center of the scandal. She also announced the first personal consequences.
The law firm had been commissioned by RTK to clarify the case. This had made waves in the travel industry and also put the tourism group FTI under great pressure.
The Handelsblatt reported in March that RTK had allegedly passed valuable sales figures from travel agencies and competitors to the group for years. The data that went to FTI is said to have been broken down by the share of sales of other tour operators in the respective travel agencies, divided by holiday regions.
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According to insiders, FTI used the numbers for a sales offensive at the expense of competitors. The third largest German tour operator has not yet commented on the allegations.
With more than 4200 affiliated travel agencies, RTK is the leading industry cooperation in Germany. It provides its partners with solutions for purchasing, marketing, sales and technology. The offices continuously supply data to RTK.
RTK: Data sharing ran from 2015 to 2023
The suspicion that RTK was passing on the figures behind the partners’ backs has now been confirmed: the cooperation has provided FTI “detailed sales figures based on its own data from the RTK sales database”, the cooperation announced. “This practice was not in accordance with concluded contracts.”
The provision of sales figures for FTI began at the end of 2015 and was discontinued at the beginning of March 2023, RTK continued. The Handelsblatt had previously reported that the transfer ran at least between 2016 and 2018.
As a consequence, RTK boss Lars Helmreich is “resting his management position until the facts have been fully clarified,” as it was said on Thursday. In addition, the internal processes and procedures should be “subjected to a further examination by a renowned auditing company in the interests of complete clarification”.
At the same time, the travel cooperation emphasizes: “According to the assessment of CMS, there have been no violations of competition law, antitrust law or criminal law.” Customer data from travel agencies were not affected.
dismissal as a consequence
Nevertheless, the first travel companies have drawn consequences. The sales organization Solamento, one of the well-known industry giants with 400 independent travel consultants, announced its exit from RTK. Solamento boss Sascha Nitsche justified this with a breach of trust. “A relationship based on partnership is no longer possible,” he told the Handelsblatt.
It is not yet known how the major tour operators will react to the study results. However, a spokesman for Schauinsland Reisen from Duisburg, one of the largest German providers, said as soon as the case became known: “Should the allegations prove to be correct, it would represent a serious violation of the fundamental principles of partnership-based business transactions.”
Industry leader Tui, which has a 25 percent stake in RTK, announced at the time that, after a statement from RTK, it wanted to decide “whether further steps are necessary and if so, which ones”. The group declined to comment on the results on Thursday.
When the allegations became known, FTI merely followed a statement from RTK to work through the process and also hired a law firm. FTI did not initially respond to short-term inquiries about the first test results and its own work-up, but also about possible consequences.
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