Being a Travel Agent During a Pandemic
I often hear people say “Being a travel agent must be so great. You get to travel to new and exciting destinations. Try local food and activities. Be wined and dined by suppliers. Get free or inexpensive travel deals. Have the best travel experiences out there.” While some of those things are true, this is not the day to day life of a travel agent. Furthermore, that is not what it was like this year. Being a travel agent during a pandemic has been a roller coaster ride of emotions.
This pandemic has been tough on the travel industry (as well as many others). When the world shut down and the US closed their borders, travel agents had to keep working. Travel agents had to get their international traveling clients home when they had no idea what was going to happen when the clock struck midnight on March 13, 2020.
Luckily, Visas and Vistas Travel only had only one client traveling in Scotland at the time. They were so understanding and flexible. After weighing all their options, they decided to finish out their vacation and travel home on their regularly scheduled day after the borders were closed. On their return, they gave us a call and let us know that they were stuck in customs and not going to make their connection. While they stood in line at customs, we were able to change their flight to the first flight the next morning and book them in a hotel for the night. They made it home a day later than planned with an overnight stay in New York.
As for the rest of the trips planned in the weeks that followed the closure (spring break season was just starting), we sat on hold all day, every day while we tried to figure out how to get our clients trips cancelled or rescheduled. There were some days that my cordless office phone would be dead and charging, my cell phone dead and charging, and I was on my personal home phone trying to take care of clients. I would like to say that we are past this, but I still have days where hold music is all I hear.
As we all know by now, this situation didn’t last a few weeks as we had hoped. We had clients that arrived home on March 14, 2020 and the next client we had traveling was our own trip to Mexico on September 22, 2020. Six month of no clients traveling. For those that might not know, generally travel agents get paid by suppliers when clients return from traveling. If you have no clients traveling for six months, you have no income for six months. Yet travel agents still had to work those 6 months cancelling trips and rebooking clients on trips that will travel at a later date.
It has been a long six months of cancelling and rebooking and sometimes re-rebooking vacations but we can see the travel tides turning. We have clients traveling to Mexico throughout the end of the year. Next year is also starting to fill up with clients excited to travel and booking new trips. I am cancelling a lot less trips, and booking a lot more new trips.
We anticipate travel to look a bit different next year. You may need a negative covid test to enter a destination, have travel protection, or have to wear a mask while in public. There might not be as much travel overseas to Europe, Africa, or Asia. However, we are seeing an increase in travel to Mexico, Caribbean, Alaska, and Hawaii for 2021. These are all destinations that we are experts in. Our clients are so excited to get back out there and travel. So are we.
