Bust Bristol travel agent forced to compensate customers

The former managing director of Bristol-based travel agent, Brilliant Weekends Limited, has been ordered to pay £1,215 compensation to customers who were out of pocket when his firm collapsed in March.

Richard Dennys, 40, pleaded guilty at Bristol Magistrates' Court to seven trading standards offences.

He was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £1,000 towards the cost of the prosecution which was brought by Bristol City Council.

The offences related to his negligence in failing to ensure legally required protection for consumers' deposits was in place and misleading claims on the firm's website.

When Brilliant Weekends, based in Hotwells Road, became insolvent last year, the city council's trading standards department was inundated with complaints from people who had paid deposits to the firm.

The company's website had claimed that consumer's money was kept safely in a trust account.

Inquiries by investigators however, revealed that this was not the case, and that no money was available to refund customers who had already paid for their stag and hen weekends.

Jonathan Martin, Trading Standards Manager at the city council, said: "When we investigated the allegations we received, it became clear that the recession and weakness of the pound were the major contributing factors to the insolvency of Brilliant Weekends.

"However businesses that sell package holidays to consumers are required by law to make sure that consumers are not left out of pocket should they hit hard times and fail.

"Misleading claims, like those on the Brilliant Weekends' website relating to the non-existent trust account, are clearly not acceptable at any stage of the business cycle."

Councillor Gary Hopkins, cabinet member for environment and community safety said, "We are pleased that there has been an order for compensation for the unlucky people who booked these trips and were so let down".

The compensation order given to Mr Dennys applies to the six people who made statements to Bristol City Council.

About 150 bookings were affected by the firm's closure.

The business started when Mr Dennys and his wife Liz were living in Umbria, Italy, in 2002.

They started selling summer stag and hen weekend breaks in Rimini to groups arriving with no frills airlines.

Six months later they returned to Bristol and after working out of a rented room for a while they set up offices in Hotwells Road.

The business rapidly expanded into corporate weekends as well as stag and hen breaks.

Mr Dennys said at the time that he and his wife were distraught that staff had lost their jobs and they themselves had nothing left.