Travel Agents Once Again Savior in Fight Against Jonas

This past fall brought us another man-made disaster with the Paris terrorist attacks. An estimated 33 million of us  have just endured a major natural disaster.

The monster Winter Storm Jonas slammed into the East Coast this past weekend, impacting millions from northern Virginia up to southern Connecticut. Some weather experts are calling it the storm of the decade and it will go down as a top-5 all-time storm for places like New York City, where the snow totals from this storm alone topped the overall seasonal average snowfall.

Although terrorism and extreme weather are certainly different disasters — the storm for one thing came with ample advance notice — they share one similarity.  They are both an opportunity for travel agents to demonstrate their value in some of the most challenging situations imaginable.

Agents sprang into action before the storm, warning clients and keeping them up to date on the conditions that promised to wreak havoc with their travel plans.

READ MORE: In Support of Travel Agents

They offered advice on what to do: have on hand several key pieces of information including phone numbers for all of your airlines, hotels and cruise lines plus your travel agent; call the airline while you’re waiting on airport lines; tap into several airline apps that can be helpful in these situations, buy travel insurance and have the phone number and policy number readily available.

And, if possible, when traveling from a cold climate, fly in the day before a cruise.

They also took concrete action to get clients out of challenging situations.

“We were alerted of the storm on Thursday and began calling our clients to see if we could change their plans,” said Sally Jane Smith, president and CEO of TravelSmiths in Point Pleasant, N.J. “We did this so they weren't forced to stress on either the first or last days of their vacation.”

If her clients could change their flights two days before the storm, Smith’s agency changed their tickets without a change fee.

Alex Kutin of Travel Leaders in Indianapolis had clients returning from a cruise.

“Since we wanted to be proactive with this situation, we contacted the airline immediately and made changes to their reservations so that they now connect in Atlanta,” she said. “The client will find out tomorrow upon their return that we have helped them divert a crisis.”

And fellow Travel Leaders agent Sue Tindell in Rice Lake, Wis., said her agency had two clients heading to Costa Rica.

“As soon as the waivers were available, we called all our clients and protected them on flights to avoid the airports with the delays and cancellations. Others were booked on flights that did not go near the East Coast.”

Above and beyond it all, agents were — and continue to be — a personal contact their clients could call on. Someone who was there, and someone who could help.

Larry D. Swerdlin, of Burton Travel Ltd of Owings Mills, Maryland, an Ensemble member who is also a Red Cross Disaster Relief volunteer, offered this perspective.

“When these traumas are not ‘front and center,’ the vast majority of consumers in the U.S. focus on price with absolutely no regard for how a third party — a travel professional — can make the problems better when times are tough. 

“Fortunately, in most cases, times are not tough. Fortunately, most of us drive around 365 days a year without ever needing our car insurance. But most folks would never think of doing that. The travel industry needs to have a mindset change to focus on that, rather than just selling a price and a preferred supplier.”

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