Hurricane Sandy Puts Far-Flung Agents to the Test

Whether located in the nasty path of Hurricane Sandy or a continent away, travel agents this week felt the storm’s harsh impact as they worked – and continue to work – to assist frustrated clients whose trip plans had gone awry.

Travel Market Report has been speaking with agents across the country to hear their accounts. Here are the stories of how four travel sellers have been coping with Sandy.

N.J. agent fears for his clients
Unlike many of his neighbors, Rick Ardis, owner of Ardis Travel in East Rutherford, N.J., was not derailed by flooding or power outages either at his home or office. He fears, however, that some of his clients were not so lucky.

“I haven’t yet heard from customers who are scheduled to take the train this weekend to Orlando,” he said. “They live in a town that was severely flooded and so may not be able to contact me. They could well be in a position where they can’t travel this weekend.”

Ardis was also concerned about the fate of his summer cottage in Seaside Heights, N.J. “It’s just two blocks from the boardwalk, which was destroyed. We heard some of the amusement park rides fell into the ocean,” he said.

Maze of obstacles
Ardis has been assisting stranded clients who encountered a maze of obstacles and wait times as they attempted to reschedule flights on their own.

“I have a customer who is stuck in Las Vegas. She was supposed to come home today [Tuesday], but Newark is closed,” he said. “She called United, waiting on hold for hours, only to be told that since she didn’t book directly with them, they couldn’t help her. They told her to call her travel agent.”

St. Louis agents take weekend duty
Anticipating the impact of Sandy on both leisure and corporate clients, St. Louis-based Brentwood Travel began planning for it last week.

Flights from St. Louis to Europe are frequently routed through East Coast gateways, so this was crucial, said president and CEO Stephanie Turner.

“We had people taking cruises out of Europe, so we got them to leave a few days early,” she said. “We arranged for hotel stays.”

Beeper duty
To assist corporate clients, agents have been “on beeper duty.”

“Our corporate agents have been working nonstop since Friday – people were calling our emergency number all weekend. They were able to take care of all our people,” often rescheduling flights to go through Atlanta or Miami instead of airports in the Northeast, said Turner.

While most activity involved outbound clients, Turner said she has clients who are waiting to get home from Europe. “There are some clients we haven’t heard from.

“Sometimes when people are stranded in Europe, they just call the airlines themselves,” Turner said, noting that they’d be better off calling their agent.

L.A. agent ignores sound advice
On Sunday, Andy Lawlor, manager of client services for TravelStore in Los Angeles, found himself wishing he had heeded his own agency’s advice.

TravelStore had sent out travel alerts to clients last week, well in advance of the storm, but Lawlor had disregarded them and flown to New York for the weekend.

Come Sunday, he was stranded.

“I didn’t think the storm would actually hit New York, and I really wanted to go there for a weekend break,” he said.

12-hour drive
“When I saw that flights were being cancelled on Sunday, I kicked into travel agent mode to determine what the closest unaffected airport would be. Then I rented a car from National and drove 12 hours to Indianapolis.”

Lawlor accessed an online flight-tracking service with his iPad and found two possible flights. On Tuesday morning, he departed from Indianapolis on Frontier Airlines, traveling through Denver to reach Los Angeles.

All the while, he experienced his own agency’s disaster assistance strategy in action. “I was getting alerts and updates from the agency all the while, just as our clients do.”

He explained that by using Sabre’s Spectrum reporting product, the agency is able to quickly determine how traveling clients are impacted by airline and airport situations and send them alerts.

VA agent sees rise in nuisance calls
While he escaped the blizzard conditions in the mountains west of his agency, Steve Lincoln, owner of Lincoln Travel in Bridgewater, Va., said the week has brought flurries of “nuisance calls.”

“I’ve been really hearing from worrywarts. For example, I got a call from someone who is traveling to Fort Lauderdale on Nov. 9 and wanted to see if her flight would be impacted.”

His storefront agency was one of relatively few businesses in town that remained open earlier this week. As a result, Lincoln said, there was a marked rise in the number of shoppers coming into the agency or calling with no real intent to book travel.

“When other businesses are closed, it’s a perfect opportunity for people to call you because they have nothing else to do,” he said. “They don’t understand that you are busy helping clients who are stranded.”

Fruitless hours
In many instances, Lincoln helped clients reschedule flights after they had spent fruitless hours trying to do it themselves. “In one case, a client had been on the phone with an airline for two hours and hadn’t even tried to call me,” he said. “When she did, I was able to cancel her flight right away.”

In general, Lincoln is giving good marks to how the airlines have reacted in terms of response and offering change fee waivers.

“They’ve done pretty well during the storm. They have not been so good in the past. Maybe it’s because of all the negative press they received during the volcano eruption in Iceland two years ago.”