Can you work out what is going to happen next?

Do you think that there are enough sensible voices highlighting your rights and strategy?

Hello and welcome to my latest podcast!

I haven’t made a podcast for a couple of weeks because I have been busy locked down, in the lockdown, writing two books and reviewing what I’ve written so far! I shall make a podcast about each of those books and their subject matter in the near future!

But talking about writing and in particular, travel-writing, I have noticed that in this past two -weeks, travel journalists and writers have been locked in a battle to out-do each other on the latest developments on COVID19, or when they don’t have anything to say, writing articles about far off places that we have little chance in travelling to, or running online surveys to determine the best seaside resort in the UK!

Trying to talk about travel at this moment in time is like trying to catch a moving feast and when it comes to Rights, there are so many poor articles published (including from one Consumers organisation), that I could devote my entire waking hours correcting the mayhem-at-large!

So, for this podcast, I am going to do a summary of the key issues, along with my views on what’s going on. I shall cover refunds and the naysayers on health-checking & social distancing at airports.

Package Holidays:

It will not have escaped your attention, that airlines and package holiday companies are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with Consumers over their deposits and fully paid-for holidays and cancellations.

On the one hand, the majority of countries are in some form of lockdown and the UK’s Foreign Office, has advised against all but essential travel outside the UK. On the other hand, you have a creeping extension of flights and package holiday cancellations because travel companies keep renewing their date when they expect us all to start travelling again - fat chance of that happening any time soon!

Flight cancellation and Package Holiday cancellation regulation is very clear; where it is cancelled by the operator, then the Consumer has to receive their monies back within a very short timeframe.

What we have witnessed however is the increasing, unilateral use of vouchers or credit-notes, urging you to rebook, some with a cursory reference to a cash refund. Some argue that the money you have paid, is part of their cashflow, without which they would collapse. For the Consumer, some of whom are already hard-pressed, they want to receive their money back so that they can live and pay their bills. It is all about the ownership of the Consumer piggy-bank - possession is nine-tenths of the law and all of that!

Trade Bodies have risen gloriously to advise that they are seeking a change in the law to ease the burdens upon their members and now appear to be suggesting that the government should pay back the Consumer all their holiday monies - yes the bail out! The revolving door for Industry is evident, albeit it revolving slowly and a good job too; I say, no changes to law are necessary and any should be viewed with great concern indeed. I can hear the ‘red-tapists’ from here!

In these past few weeks, I have heard from Consumers who have been threatened for their ‘angry’ but respectful social media posts, I’ve heard of companies refusing to deal with Consumers unless they take down their negative reviews. I have also heard of Consumers being told that they will have to wait for their money for anywhere between 120 and up to over 270 days! I have seen scripts of advice from travel company lawyers advising Consumers that the complex law of Frustration of Contract defeats obligations and rights contained in regulations, but very silent about the provisions within regulations. I have also seen almost begging letters asking consumers not to call on their rights.

It’s no secret, I have tried to engage and support the Industry, and with the exception of some notable members of the Industry, the phone line has been silent. I have set out my views on the changing of laws along with presenting a good time-limited solution to the problem, but no, nothing, nada, rien and even our travel writers are generally silent on the issue.

One curious but nonetheless welcome intervention has been from Kane Pirie, the owner of Vivid Travel, who has challenged the ‘norms’ in Travel. He has demanded  that Consumers are refunded according to law, the creation of ‘Trusts’ whereby the Consumer money is held separately from the business and is only paid to suppliers once the holiday has been taken and he has called out his ex-Trade Body and other Travel Companies for backing the wrong horse. He has a point and it is one that I can see online, is attracting positive reviews from Consumers. Top marks to Mr Pirie!

All of this is a political failure and a failure of the wider industry to engage all stakeholders, even those with a dissenting opinion, to create the conditions whereby order can flow from the chaos and confidence is stabilised.

I am afraid to say this, but the damage to Consumer confidence is already done and will become more focussed in the next two-months when of course the majority of UK Consumers intended to travel. The wider travel industry has not discharged itself well, but neither have my fellow travel writers!

So to help Consumers, I am currently finishing off a standard letter which Consumers can use in the coming weeks to express their rights and this will be the subject of a podcast quite soon!

The naysayers on health-checking:

I don’t know about you, but I have been a little irritated by the sight of air passengers freely disembarking from goodness knows where and walking straight out of the airport without any form of health-checking; then there is the packed Are Lingus flight down from Belfast to London; where is the sense in all of that?

I’ve noted the nervousness from Airlines UK and Heathrow airport who are concerned about measures on isolation and social distancing. Airlines UK believe that these measures will kill the airline industry; Heathrow airport claims that it will have to introduce queues of up to 1km for each flight to comply with such measures. One security commentator has expressed concern that airport security, concentrating on health-checking, will allow the terrorists in our midst to take advantage; it’s all a little bit exclusive, isn’t it chaps?

Let’s understand one thing the general public may not be aware of: the return, predicted by airlines themselves, to 2019 passenger levels, is not expected until 2023! If that’s the case, the planes are not going to be full and your airports are not going to be over-populated and even if health-checking is mandated, airports will obviously have to hire more people! 

Equally, let’s not also forget that pre-COVID, the aviation industry had its own problems with competition, brexit and of course the huge amounts of debt that Travel Companies all carry - let’s not be too reminiscent for an imagined golden-age before COVID hit town!

Already in the far-east, they have trialled PPE uniforms for cabin crew. Disinfection methodology of passengers via UV rays, robotic systems to disinfect public areas and innovative methods of seating passengers with screens have been offered by design companies; all of which sounds very positive to me - travel writers please take note!

I did say a couple of weeks ago that summer may not happen and that travel will be different; it will be different for longer than I even thought possible - of course all this could change if a safe vaccine is produced.

But I guess in the froth of COVID, I shall in the coming weeks, have to dissect the why’s and wherefores of Travel and try to rise above the noise!

(This is the text of the "script for for Frank's CreatingRipples™ Podcast: Travel & COVID: Sense through the noise! You can listen to the Podcast here)