IN THE SPOTLIGHT: HOW AGENTS ARE DEALING WITH THE CRISIS


Agents have been working from home, behind closed doors and looking after loved ones as the country faces the coronavirus pandemic. Juliet Dennis, Harry Kemble and Ben Ireland report


We wanted to stay in travel so we set up Move Travel and had booked up


house-sitting jobs for the next 12 months to work from. Before that, we spent 18 years working for


Sarah and Richard Pratt


Last month, SARAH and RICHARD PRATT, former customer service manager and destination manager for Thomas Cook overseas respectively, set up their own ‘mobile’ online agency that they run while house-sitting and looking after people’s pets. They had hoped to turn their lives around after being made redundant last September.


Shevaun Joy


Thomas Cook overseas in resort together. It’s not even six months since Thomas Cook went under and we lost our jobs. Now we have a travel business but no one is booking holidays. We still have most of our house-sits booked but the next two we had lined up have cancelled due to the owners not travelling because of the coronavirus. Now we’re staying at my sister-in-law’s. It’s unclear how long this will go on for, but


we’re not as worried about the long-term as I’m sure everyone will go back to travelling. It’s just crazy that we were made redundant and then chose two jobs that have both been badly affected by the coronavirus.


Emma


Summerill and daughter


SHEVAUN JOY, a partner at West Yorkshire- based agency Destination, has been providing food packages for older clients arriving


back to the UK on


repatriation flights from Europe amid the coronavirus crisis. I can’t take credit for it, it was my business partner Lisa’s idea. We were conscious


that there’s been a lot of things in the media about panic buying. We just thought for these older clients, who potentially have to come straight back from their holiday and self-isolate, it would be a nice touch. So we decided to pick up bread and milk while we were out and about, stick it in a carrier bag and leave it on their doorstep. One of our clients rang us straight away and said thank you and asked where we'd got it all from because the shops haven’t got anything in. They were just so grateful. I think through this really rough storm that


we’re having, those who have looked after others are going to be front of mind when people start rebooking.


Mark Godden


Cruise Circle product development manager MARK GODDEN, who has long worked


from home, has been helping the rest of the team prepare to


start doing the same.


I feel sorry for our customers – some are taking it better than others. It’s hard to get the information after someone sees something on social media. There are rumours that a certain ship is not going to a certain port, for example. We have passengers on Holland America


Line’s Zaandam, which was waiting outside Puerto Arenas in Chile but I imagine it will go on to the US [it subsequently rerouted for Florida]. We are doing what we can to get people home. I cannot say how proud I am of the business and the team – talk about stepping up to the plate. There are staff in the office but that will change soon. We are going to do FaceTime calls with colleagues, and use Skype and WhatsApp. On one day, I started at five in the morning and finished at about 11pm. You can’t carry on at that rate – you need to look after yourself. I’m trying to walk around the garden and have a coffee outside every day.


14


26 MARCH 2020


travelweekly.co.uk


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