Travel Firm’s Cash Crunch Hurts Some Tourists’ Trips

Financial problems at an Encino travel company left at least 70 Americans to fend for themselves in the Orient after hotels and other tour businesses refused to honor their prepayment vouchers, a company official said Monday.

Tourists arranged their luxury tours through Hemphill Harris Travel Corp. But because of Hemphill’s problems, hotels in Hong Kong, Bali and other Oriental sites refused to accept vouchers from Hemphill, said Michael Jay, a vice president of marketing for Westar Acquisitions Corp., Hemphill’s parent company.

The tourists were forced to put up money out of their own pockets to return home, continue their trips at their own expense or seek the help of another travel company, he said.

“My understanding is that nobody was stranded and left any place, that everybody is home or on their way home,” Jay said.

Jay said he thought that the only tourists affected were those on trips to the Orient.

However, another tour operator, Abercrombie & Kent, said it was asked by travel agents to help an eight-member American tour in Australia that had booked their trip through Hemphill.

Hemphill has been struggling since the summer, when its business suffered a severe blow due to the civil strife in China in early June, Jay said.

“We had to refund massive amounts of money to customers because we could no longer conduct those tours in China,” he said. Since then, “we’ve had a severe cash shortage” and the company fell behind on some payments to hotel operators, Jay said.