The last week has been a tough time for everyone and every industry, and in ours, it is no different. We wanted to pause and take a breath for a moment and tell you what we’ve been doing in the wake of this devastating pandemic to help our customers.
The situation
The whole world started closing its doors to foreign visitors. That meant that we needed to get all our customers home as quickly and safely as possible. Some needed to leave immediately, and some had a few more days before the country closed. This in itself was and is a hugely challenging exercise.
Government and Country information wasn’t detailed or clear enough. Quite often confusing or just too generic. Not helpful for us when trying to find out whether our customers far out at sea needed to come back to port.
We had to figure out from the FCO websites which of our customers were affected first. Next was how we could get them home in light of all the Airlines cancelling more and more flights. We would book a new flight and within minutes it would be cancelled leaving us back at square one. Or the route change we had organised would then say UK nationals were now not allowed in or to transit through the country. Whole cities and airports and countries were closing their doors all the time and with every hour passing, narrowing down the possibilities for getting our guests home.
What have we done
The Scuba Travel team have worked tirelessly over the last few weeks, checking every changing FCO advisory, flight cancellation or schedules and ensuring our customers were updated on their ever-changing situation. Our extensive knowledge of the countries we operate in has been invaluable for orchestrating and executing this complex and stressful operation. As a travel agent, we are able to efficiently reroute clients through different Airports or Countries. We have agents on the ground mobilised to provide transport to alternative airports or book extra nights at hotels. We have the ability to hold and book client’s flights on multiple airlines from multiple airports as a backup.
How we can help
People often think they would rather book their holidays individually, which will often save some pennies. However, in light of the situation we wanted to highlight to you just how far we, Scuba Travel will go to ensure we get you home and explain what tools and expertise we have at our disposal to help us and most importantly you.
Our 24hr emergency helpline for our customers is essential, we don’t work office hours, we cover 24 hours 7 days per week 365 days of the year.
Going forward
We answer emails, online chats and our dedicated team works around the clock to ensure wherever you are in the world or whatever time zone you are in we can help you.
Contact us by email, phone or online chat. Initially, our main priority has had to be our customers who are on holiday and the ones who were due to travel imminently.
The future
We have worked hard with our suppliers to offer alternative dates going forward so you can fulfil your diving dreams in the near future. We will be continuing to contact our customers due to travel with us, by order of the departure date. All our customers are very important to us and we haven’t forgotten any of you. We ask you at this worrying time to stay well and be patient. We hope we will all be diving around the world again very soon.
