Travel Agencies Forced to Evacuate in Wake of Calgary Flooding

Last weeks flooding in Calgary caused an estimated $3 billion to $5 billion worth of damage and forced evacuated travel agencies to implement their disaster plans.

Most of the devastation from two overflowing rivers occurred in the city’s downtown, the location of many corporate headquarters for Canada’s booming oil and gas industry.

“I’m a born and raised Calgarian and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Beth Gardner, CEO of Custom Travel Solutions. Located one block from the river, the agency’s business is 90 percent corporate.

“We were evacuated around 3:30 Thursday afternoon, and the flood came that evening, so there was no warning whatsoever. We know that the city built a berm on the other side of the river, but the water was so fast and furious that it destroyed the berm.”

Well-laid plans
When interviewed, Gardner and her agents were still on mandatory evacuation and water was still being pumped out of her building. She said she was hoping to be back at work Wednesday or Thursday.

The flood triggered the first implementation of Custom Travel’s disaster plan which Gardner said worked well. Five phone lines were redirected to agents’ homes while all online bookings were forwarded to one person.

“The phones were the most challenging by far, because we’ve been unable to transfer calls at this point to agents, but clients are being very understanding and they’re sending requests in by email,” she said.

In spite of the problems, it was a bonding experience for the senior management team. Members were updated with two to three conference calls a day and worked together to determine the needs for the next 24 hours.

Cancelled trips
Coreen Calvert, owner of Integrity Travel, an Ensemble Travel affiliate, was back in her office on Monday after being evacuated the week before. With no one around, however, she said there was no point in staying. Calvert expects her agency’s business will be affected for some time.

“A lot of corporate clients can’t get into their buildings,” Calvert said. “They have no access to email and can’t go to work. They’re not going to be traveling, because they’re going to have to be around to deal with things once the building gets up and running.”

Although her company has an emergency line, Calvert was a bit surprised how few calls came in. “I only had one emergency call. One client couldn’t travel, because his house was underwater. He was going to San Francisco and we had to cancel his trip. We had to cancel a corporate client, as well,” she said.

Virtuoso affiliate Vision 2000’s disaster plan was quickly employed at its three downtown offices. When the flood first hit last Thursday the company forwarded all phone calls to its Toronto office, then to its Vancouver office later in the day, and finally to Manila where it maintains a 10-person staff to handle nights and weekends.

Worse than envisioned
“We were fairly well prepared for it, but what we hadn’t envisioned was the units in Calgary being inaccessible at the same time,” said Michael Broadhurst, the company’s executive vice president/director. “What we couldn’t do is to get into any of the offices to reboot a couple of things that needed rebooting.”

In addition to Vision 2000’s operations, several clients were severely impacted. “The Calgary Flames is one of our clients that was among the worst affected. We actually have an office in the Saddledome [which suffered serious floodwater damage]. They’ll take a while to get back and ready again.

“One of our clients, an oil company, had 1,200 people going up to their site in Fort McMurray and they had to work through the weekend contacting all of them to see if those people were flooded out so they could change the rotation.”

Agents are hopeful in spite of the challenges. “All told we’ve been very fortunate. It was a great shock to have something that I never imagined would happen, but there’s a great spirit in Calgary that will overcome this pretty quickly,” said Broadhurst.