Chesterfield-based holiday firm Nova Tours ceases trading

Nova Tours has been running since 1988, originally as David Sheriff of Nova Tours, and ran coach trips to destinations across the UK.

But the firm’s owner David Sherriff announced yesterday that the COVID-19 pandemic had forced it out of business, and promised all customers a full refund.

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“We would like to say that we know we got a few things wrong in March when the travel ban was first announced,” he added.

“We could never have imagined what was about to unfold, and had we known we would have acted differently.

“When COVID-19 landed in UK we were inundated with panic cancellations for the whole year. We estimate we lost around 40 per cent of our bookings for the year in front in the first few weeks of that first case being diagnosed.

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“Then we had to contend with the travel ban. We completely understand why it had to be done but nonetheless it had a catastrophic effect on our business as we have had to issue huge amounts of refunds and gift vouchers.

“The final nail being we were down 100 per cent on new bookings with no revenue coming in and being faced with an unprecedented amount of refunds to process and not knowing how long this would last. The reality is we are a small business and in the end we could not survive COVID-19.

“The cruel part being we had hugely invested in Nova Tours’ future and we were set for such a fantastic year.”

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