On Sunday March 1, it was all hands on deck for the Gina Storey and her staff at Travelling Places.
When conflict between Iran and America erupted it was clear there were repercussions for travellers in the Middle East, so Gina headed into her office on Sunday morning, calling her staff in for a briefing.
“We’re pulling on lots of different resources, – industry resources, what the airlines are doing, what ATIA recommends, what various bodies within the industry are saying.”
It was essential that information was gleaned from reliable sources, and Gina avoided looking at social media, looking to the Australian Government smart traveller website, and her industry contacts.
After 33 years as the principal of Travelling Places, Gina has weathered a pandemic and conflicts, and she remains calm and purposeful in the way she handles this latest challenge.
“The thing is, it’s only affecting clients that are travelling through the Middle East,” she said.
Gina herself has a European holiday booked for May.
“We have a lot of clients booked for April May – we’re just monitoring the whole situation.
“It’s changing constantly, daily, not only once a day, but several times a day – and different airlines have different, have different policies.”
The main affected airlines that service South East Queensland are Qatar and Emirates, both of which fly from Brisbane and Gina is hopeful that these airlines will find a way to resume normal operations quickly.
“Dubai is the biggest airport hub in the world, it’s massive, and Emirates is one of the biggest airlines in the world.
“So whatever happens they’re going to get something sorted out – they’re not just going to sit on their laurels and wait.”
Changing plans
For Gina’s clients, navigating current world events is a matter of a phone call, email or dropping into their office, but for people who have booked online, it is a different matter.
“We sort it all out for our clients, it’s part of what we do.
“For example, we have somebody who’s meant to be flying to Europe in 10 days’ time, who came and saw us on Monday, very concerned about it.
“So we could give them the options: we can secure seats on other airlines, we can process the whole thing and change everything. And that’s what we do at the moment.”
“We’ve had a lot of people who walked in the door asking for help because they’re booked online and they don’t know how to go about it or how it’s going to impact them.”
In these situations what Gina can do is limited as once someone books direct or online, airlines will not let agents get involved.
Her experience makes her optimistic, however.
“We’re hoping that this all settles down fairly quickly. That people, including me, can go on the ticket that I’ve that’s issued and paid for.
“We’ll get back to some sort of normality fairly soon.”
