Advantage Travel Partnership has sent an open letter to its partners, asking for “commitments” that will ensure members can rebook cancelled holidays easily and with no obstructions.
Speaking on a Travel Weekly Webcast, leisure director Kelly Cookes said: “We wrote asking them about a number of things, such as making sure that, if they are going to announce that they’re using Refund Credit Notes, that they’re in line with what Abta is putting on its website so that it’s not driving additional questions.
“We also asked about balance due dates. We know it’s a huge issue for an agent to go to a customer and ask them to pay their balance on a holiday that potentially won’t go ahead because it’s going in the next few weeks. So we have asked them for some flexibility on balance collections to avoid customers cancelling.
“We asked them to make sure future pricing is in line with this year and not increased if people want to rebook.”
She added: “It just about everybody working together while all of the agents are trying to rebook and protect as much as they can. There are just a few things that I think that we need in return to enable us to do that to the maximum of our ability.”
Advantage member Nick Marks, joint managing director of Baldwin’s Travel, said: “After all this is finished, and we’re back to some sort of normality, there are going to be some suppliers that are going to come out of this with their heads held high.
“And I think there are going to be some out there that we’re going to have some very difficult discussions with, from an Advantage perspective on the commercial side, they’re going to do that for us.
He added: “There are some out there that have been less than helpful with coming up with their own policies, which then they can pass on to us. The lack of help from some of these guys has been pretty awful to be honest.”
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