Today is the first day of what is expected to be a six week process. It will investigate how the victims died which will be very harrowing for the relatives, but will also report on whether the organisations involved could have provided more information to ensure that the risks of travelling to Tunisia were known, following the earlier attack on visitors to a museum. One relative interviewed by Sky News stated that his father couldn't believe what a bargain he'd got as Thomson had slashed prices by 40% but he was unaware of any potential security risk.
The coroner will also be addressing whether Thomson provided enough advice to their customers or solely relied on them to do their own research into the situation. A link to FCO travel advice is now available on Thomson's website, but apparently this was put in place after the Tunisia attack. FCO ended the Locate service claiming that hardly anyone used it; probably because it wasn't well-publicised. This has now been replaced with e-mail alert sign-up or following on Twitter/Facebook.
Should we expect holiday companies such as Thomson, Thomas Cook, etc to do more to manage our safety on holiday or is it solely in our hands to ensure that we "do our homework" before travelling. Specialist travel risk companies exist, but their alerts can only be accessed if an employer has a contract with them.
