Thomas Cook shares are cratering due to the impact of terrorism on key destinations

Shares in the UK-based travel agent Thomas Cook are absolutely tanking after it delivered a terrible outlook for the year.

The stock price dropped by 18% within the first hour of trading on the FTSE100 - hitting a 3-year low - after Thomas Cook announced that its underlying earnings for the full-year would be at the lower end of expectations in its interim results statement.

This is due to the holiday makers choosing not to travel to Turkey as well as the impact the Brussels attacks on demand from tourists.

Thomas Cook has already been impacted by drop in demand for Tunisia, a popular British tourist destination, after attacks on holiday makers there in June last year. 38 people were killed when a man opened fire on a beach.

Here is Thomas Cook's share price performance as of 8.50 a.m. BST:

Peter Fankhauser, CEO of Thomas Cook, said in today's update (emphasis ours):

Thomas Cook has made significant progress in the last six months. Despite disruption in some of our key markets, we've managed to slightly grow our revenues on a like-for-like basis, having anticipated the shift in demand away from Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt and into the Western Mediterranean and long haul destinations.

As we look ahead to our busiest period, Thomas Cook is trading well to destinations other than Turkey, with particularly strong bookings to Spain and the USA. However demand for Turkey - our second largest market last year - remains significantly below last year's levels. This has impacted our German Airlines business in particular. We've also seen a sharp decline in demand in Belgium following the tragic attack at Brussels airport in March. As a result, taking into account anticipated foreign exchange translation gains, we expect underlying EBIT for the full year to be between £310 million and £335 million. We continue to expect to pay a dividend in respect of the current year's earnings.