Year: 2020

With the current state of ‘our world,’ we are all finding ways to take care of ourselves, connect with family & friends, and perhaps finding new hobbies to keep our minds occupied.

It’s now been about 5 weeks at home with my husband and two sons (ages 11 & 14).  After their daily school work, one proceeds to complete another puzzle while the other busts out a Bon Jovi song on guitar. I myself have turned to yoga, long walks outside and many good books.

This time at home has also given ample time for ‘spring cleaning’ and de-cluttering.  I spent a good portion of last week going through photo albums while enjoying a wide range of different flavored teas.

We are all aware that these are trying times for the travel industry, however looking through over 20 years of pictures, destinations, memories…..it gives me hope!

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Dear clients,

“We believe in the power of travel. It connects business partners, families and friends. Travel also allows us to broaden our horizons and to open our minds to new cultures and countries. We believe in helping you Create your best Days Ever! and for many of our clients that would involve an experience created from some travel that they took.”

This was the opening paragraph of my last letter to you and I wanted to repeat it for the following reason: It is missing something or rather someone. It does not emphasize enough the travel consultants that are here to help you. Over the past 5 weeks, when the travel world simply stopped, a group of people did not stop. Tirelessly they assisted clients trying to get home, then process refunds and credits from suppliers whose rules and procedures were changing on a daily basis. This group of people continued to provide outstanding service even after they and the entire global industry was laid off. As countless testimonials received indicate this service by our Travel Consultants was not only provided to our clients but to ANYONE that phoned, emailed or otherwise contacted us.

It was heartwarming and extremely inspiring to receive so much positive feedback from those we helped in some of the worst days in travel.  Here are just a couple of the messages we received:

• The dedication and charity that you and your staff are showing is astounding, Ian. I will never forget it and will retell it many times.
• I would like to commend Martha Banias for the amazing assistance she provided me in getting my son Kevin home from France just before the flights ended. She went above and beyond the call of duty and was a real angel of mercy. (This client’s son had booked his flights “online” and couldn’t receive any assistance from the online company)

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Faceless, online electronic booking systems proved during the current COVID-19 crisis just how much they care about their “customers”. Expedia, the largest online travel agency in the world, proved just how much it cares about its clients. The hundreds of thousands of complaints, the high level of frustration being unable to even get through to their call centers and the start of class action lawsuits all point to a company that was unable to provide a service to their clients. They can handle huge amounts of automated bookings, but when it comes time to handle customer service issues, their systems totally fall apart and fail. And who pays the price for that failure? Their “clients”.

As a small business operating out of brick and mortar offices in Winnipeg and Edmonton, Canada, our clients know who we are, they know where to find us, they know they can get in touch with us, they know who they’re entrusting their travel plans to.

When you book online, do you really know who you’re buying from?

For interest sake, let’s take a look at the world’s Online Travel Agencies or travel booking engines that so many travellers use. Essentially there are only two: Expedia Group (running under 23 different brands) and BookingHoldings (previously PriceLine, running under the brands of Bookings.com, Priceline, Kayak, Open Table and Agoda). These two giants combined control 82% of the world’s online bookings!

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April 1st, known as April Fools’ Day or All Fools’ Day, is here and if you’re like me, I’m kind of feeling like Mother Nature is playing a very nasty prank on humankind. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact our world in many different ways and the seriousness of it makes it pretty hard to feel much like laughing. But, boy, if there was ever a time we needed to laugh, it’s now!

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As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to affect the communities where we live and work (and communities around the world where we love to travel), please know that we are working diligently to assist our clients. Those who are currently travelling we’re assisting to get home safely; those booked to travel over the next few days and weeks, to reschedule their travel plans for future travel; cancelling plans for clients when  future travel is not an option.

We must also do all we can to ensure the health and safety of both our staff and clients.

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