Dear Valued Partner,
We hope you and your loved ones have remained safe and healthy during this extraordinary time. The effects of COVID-19 have been far reaching, impacting lives both personally and professionally. Reflecting on the past many weeks while also considering the effects of COVID-19 on our industry, we wanted to take a moment to report back to you and express our sincere appreciation for your business. The drastic pause in business travel along with the web of continuously evolving airline and other travel policies have all underscored the importance of a managed travel program. As your professional travel management partner, we thought it may be a good time to share some of the ways in which we are assisting you as this pandemic has evolved.
Supporting your Duty of Care Program in a Fast-Changing Environment
While Duty of Care programs come in all shapes and sizes, common throughout them is the vital importance of the data generated through our partnership – the Who, What, When, and Where of your travel. The early weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak brought a flurry of changes impacting both impending travel plans and travel that was already in progress. In order to help customers through that dynamic time, we focused resources on providing accurate, timely information through hundreds of custom, on-demand reports. That information enabled customers to make informed and decisive decisions about their travel program and helped to identify their most at-risk travelers.
Unused Ticket Tracking and Refund Management
Our ability to track and manage your travel has never been more valuable. All trips canceled through The Travel Team in response to the outbreak have been captured and processed in accordance with fare rules and airline policy. While questions still remain around how those policies may change in response to COVID-19 – and in particular, if and when trips will be refundable – please rest assured that we are staying abreast of all updates and working to ensure our customers realize the full benefit of the industry’s response.
Helping Ensure Travelers Return Home
While we have invested significantly in technology in recent times, we still remain a service company at heart. The pulse of that heartbeat is our front-line staff of agents and advisors. From ensuring the return home of a study abroad student teaching English in rural Spain, to the rerouting of a business traveler mid-flight to avoid impending border closures, the effect our team has had in supporting customers truly has been a ray of hope in a dark time.
As the situation continues to evolve, please know we are doing everything in our power to ease the burden of travel for our customers. To those of you operating somewhat normally as an essential business, we stand by ready and able to service your travelers as needed. To those customers that have suspended their travel in response to government directives and market conditions, we look forward to the day where we can get your travelers safely back on the road and back to what they do best, fueling your business’s success. To all our customers, we thank you for the opportunity to serve you and remain your proud partners in travel.
Stay safe and be well,
Beth ODonnell
SVP, Operations
Luke Thomas
SVP, Business Development
