Travel in 2020

Working in the travel industry for over 18 years I have seen my fair share of travel disruptions; the SARS epidemic, Volcanic ash clouds grounding flights and airline strikes amongst others. However, this year has been an incredibly challenging one, unprecedented has been the word to describe 2020. Never before has the industry ground to a halt like this. We’ve all seen the images of stationary aircraft all over the world. I just shudder to think of all the smaller hotels worldwide that have been adversely affected by the lack of tourism, not to mention all the little businesses, restaurants, bars and cafes that rely on tourist trade for their income. There are countless places around the world that are not as fortunate to have a welfare state matching ours. We are the lucky ones.

My first concern, when the travel ban was announced was to get my customers home quickly before borders closed. This is where using a travel professional to book your holiday really does move you head and shoulders past the rest of the people that think they don’t need one! I have been up way past my bedtime and in the wee hours securing seats on the last aircraft out, re-routing flights and changing hotel reservations- all sometimes before my clients in resort even realised there was a problem. I feel sorry for those clients away from home without a travel agent who were frantically trying to get through to speak to an online travel agent – the wait times were hours long. I’m confident that my clients had none of this. I’m always just a WhatsApp away. Even high street agents have closing hours, whilst I can book flights at any time of the day! It’s a no brainer.

Once my clients were all safely home, my job then started to amend travel dates for my upcoming bookings and securing refunds for others. Refunds have had a lot of negative press, mainly due to how long they took to process. What wasn’t reported on is the fact that never before have airlines had to process refunds on this scale before, all with a much-reduced workload as staff were furloughed, another word of the year! I’m proud to say Travel Counsellors did top a poll that Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert completed for overall positive experience.

Being self-employed I have worked all year. It was all about finding travel windows for clients that were desperate to get away. It has been a challenging year as routes were pulled last minute, flights were cancelled and entry requirements seem to change on a daily basis. It can be a minefield booking a post covid break; forms to fill in, quarantines to navigate and new rules being written by the day- that’s in addition to searching the internet for your holiday itself! Throw Brexit into the mix and it's enough to blow anyone's mind! Just hand over the lot to me and I’ll be more than happy to take care of it.

Talking of travel windows, ours this year were Cornwall and Devon- included are some pretty pictures to tell the tale. It’s all about finding what you can do rather than what you can’t! I book UK breaks as well so please get in touch if you're looking at getting away closer to home.