The Covid-19 pandemic will enhance those travel brands that “did the right thing” and expose those that didn’t, according to PR and communications experts.
Speaking on a Travel Weekly Webcast on trust and reputation in the travel industry, Danny Rogers, editor-in-chief of PR Week, said: “Companies that have got a good culture, that are well set-up in terms of customer service, that tend to have an ethical compass, will come out of this ok.
“But if companies have been cutting costs on customer service, or they’ve been trying to hoard cash, or whatever other sort of unethical practices, I think they’re the ones that will suffer.
“I don’t think there’s a blanket thing that every travel company can do to come through this, but it’s about doing the right thing – ethical behaviour or corporate purpose will only become more and more important over the next six months.”
Rogers added: “Travel needs to be doing its best to act in the right way in the long-term interest of the consumer, otherwise it could have a serious long-term reputation problem on its hands.”
Paul Charles, founder and chief executive of The PC Agency, said: “It goes back to trust and dare I say it, I think there are owners out there and CEOs sadly of larger companies, who are not realising this is going to be about long-term relationships, that we’re all in it together.
“They need to be paying back [refunds] fast in order to protect the whole chain of the industry. And if you don’t pay it back, you’ll find that some of your key agents go under, which can’t be right at all, so they should be paying back.”
Charles added that it may not all be deliberate.
“It’s because they furloughed so many people, or the customer services teams are so busy because they’ve been inundated with enquiries. They simply haven’t got the admin in place to pay it back quickly.”
Rachel O’Reilly, Kuoni director of communications, said: “We’re a customer service brand; we have to have enough people to deal with our customers.
“We took 50 people to run our virtual call centre and set that up within two days with laptops to everyone’s homes. We weren’t a home-working business, we had stores, but we moved very quickly.”