Every corner of our industry is in deep trouble, we know that.
It takes ingenuity, positivity, courage, imagination, lateral thinking and teamwork just to keep on going. October has been a difficult month – we all thought that things would improve as soon as borders reopened, but this hasn’t proved true due to the existence of ever-changing red lists, restrictions, quarantines, second waves, all of which are discouraging clients from travelling outside South Africa. So there is still lots of room for improvement, and we salute you brave travel agents who are soldiering on through thick and thin.
Our poll asked agents, ‘Now that our borders have (sort of) opened, how’s business? Compared with October 2019, how much business do you expect to write during the month of October 2020?’
An overwhelming 85% of them said they expected to write only 10% to 30% of the business they wrote last October. Only the remaining 15% were more optimistic, and among those, only 2% of readers estimated they would write the same amount or more than October 2019.
A few readers were moved to write to us to tell us things were even worse than we might have anticipated, and we should have started the scoring at 0% of business, in line with what they were experiencing.
Mada de Lange said: “The latest poll should start at 0% income in comparison to October 2019. Otherwise we (and perhaps other travel suppliers) cannot participate.”
Penny Bannerman concurred with this sentiment, saying: “Your lead article for voting says ‘Is business 10-30% of last year?’ There should be a line for nil-10. We in international outgoing travel can’t book anything to almost all foreign destinations for October. Tried to book Vietnam for December and they are re-closing their border until March 2021 due to fresh outbreak. This came through 10 minutes ago. Outgoing completely forgotten in this industry.”