Thursday 7 February 2013

Global Enduro Business Fail Shocker!


Motorcycle News reported in their issue of 06/02/13 that the major motorcycle adventure tour operator Global Enduro has gone into administration. Global Enduro was behind the flagship Enduro Himalaya tour, as well as the charity-based Enduro Africa. This came as a big shock, and I suspect the reverberations will go on for some time.

The Global Enduro web-site reports the fact that the business has gone into administration, but is also (at 07/02/13) still advertising tours to Bolivia, Cambodia, and Himalaya. The links seem to be broken, so maybe they haven’t fully updated the site yet. According to Companies House, Global Enduro Limited (Company No. 04833131) went into administration on 28/01/13. It looks like this doesn’t just affect the South Africa charity tours - the CAA claims site refers to Arctic Enduro, Cambo Enduro, Enduro Africa, Enduro Himalaya, Enduro India and Karma Enduro.

MCN reports that some nominated charities have not received all the donations they were expecting. Not all the tours were sold on the basis of inclusive charitable donations, but looking at the way the charity tours were sold there is an argument for saying the charitable donation monies in Global Enduro’s hands were subject to a trust and could not be taken for the company’s day-to-day business expenses. If that is right then the Administrators could be obliged to account for that money first before other creditors are paid. And there would be a big question mark over whether the company might have been trading insolvent but for using those monies.

I wouldn’t accept the idea that if Global Enduro agreed something with the recipient charities then it was ok to delay paying over charitable donations while they used the money in the business – if that is what they intended then they should have made that crystal clear to paying customers before taking their money.

Whether people would have agreed to book their trips on the basis that donations would not be passed straight to the charities is another question. Some people will have raised sponsorship to be able to meet the trip costs and will be really unhappy if that sponsorship money has been lost in the company’s trading failure.

If, as the MCN report suggests, Global Enduro haven’t been segregating the charitable donations from their day-to-day trading funds then it raises another issue - whether pre-paid customer deposits were kept separate.

UK Package Holiday Regulations contain requirements for security and for holding of pre-paid monies separately from the tour operator’s trading funds, to facilitate refunds in the event of a business failure. This is based on European (EU) law. Global Enduro had ATOL arrangements in place for flight inclusive packages.

In my experience not all motorcycle tour operators provide information on how they comply with the Regulations. This high-profile business fail could lead to UK Trading Standards taking an interest generally in how motorcycle tour operators handle deposits. Personally I wouldn’t want to book any tours where I wasn’t 100% sure my deposit was safe and the tour operator could actually deliver on the trip.

However this stacks up, the directors of Global Enduro Limited owe their customers and the biking public generally an explanation.