Agents say they feel more positive about the future than they have for weeks as operator refunds come through and customer demand starts to return.
The burden of sorting out refunds, which overwhelmed agents at the start of the UK lockdown, is now easing, say agents, giving them the chance to look ahead more to the future.
Speaking on a Travel Weekly Webcast, Oasis Travel managing director Sandra Corkin said there were “green shoots” of recovery for the industry.
The six-branch agency has now refunded just over 60% of those clients who were due to travel between March and the end of June and whose trips were cancelled.
She said: “Over the past week or ten days, we are seeing some of those [refunds] come back from operators we were having difficulty getting refunds from, which is just wonderful.
“There has been great concern among our customers; we had a lot of people strongly objecting to Refund Credit Notes.
“We’ve also started to make a lot of plans for reopening so it’s good to see the green shoots, and we’ve had more bookings last week than we’ve had since lockdown, so it’s great.”
Richard Slater, owner of Henbury Travel in Macclesfield, took a £12,000 booking after posting on social media about his agency reopening on June 15.
“It is a lot more positive now than it was, say, three or four weeks ago,” he said. “We did the post on our Facebook page the other day about reopening and no comments were negative and we’ve had some new bookings in the last couple of weeks.”
Premier Travel director Paul Waters agreed there was now “a bit of hope” as new bookings began to come through and refunds were being paid. “It’s not massive numbers but regular bookings coming through is a positive,” he said.
“Everyone’s processes are improving. Tour operators had to get new processes set up to be able to get the refunds coming through.”
