Traveling is one thing on everyone’s bucket list. Whether it be to see specific thing in one’s own country or to get a number of stamps on your passport traveling is the one thing people can bond over. It brings about a mutual love for not wanting to be a little fish in a little pond.
If it is to travel abroad then plans are made a few months ahead and a group of people or even a solo trip so that everyone has a clear time line, budget and whatever else they need for the trip. The people that help organize these trips are travel agents. But with Covid coming around and restricting all the travel plans, made people unable to travel inside their own countries, let alone to foreign lands.
The year 2021 was the worst for travel agents as Covid hit hard and almost all the countries closed their borders to foreign travelers, purely because they did not want the contamination and the spread to get any worse. This also meant that travel restrictions were also placed within the respective countries.
A travel agent from Ireland has said that while 2020 was a terrible year, 2021 isn’t looking all that great for the future of travel either. While people believe that traveling may be possible towards the end of the year Pat Dawson who is the CEO of the Irish Travel Agents Association doesn’t seem very hopeful of this. He stated when asked if he was excited for the travel bans to be less strict “Not really. Not really and I’ll tell you why. Obviously, we want everything to open safely but we can’t risk August, because the fact is that you’ll remember last year, we had to deal with refunds and cancellations. Earlier this week, Aer Lingus cancelled all of their flights up until the 18th of July, they’re all gone now. What we’re saying to people at the moment is that if the public is booking trips, they’re not booking with travel agents for August because we’re telling them, ‘we can’t risk your money to book August because there’s no certainty about August. The last two weeks in August is maybe 50/50 at best, there could be a decent operation in place but we don’t know. What we’re saying to people – although there’s many that booked in September, October, November – and what most people are telling us is, ‘okay, look, I’m really not going to risk it, it’s going to be 2022. It’s an individual decision but the vast majority of travel agents around the country are selling from September onwards and we are scared to sell August because of the clients getting into trouble with their money. Our job is to find the clients’ money, that’s our responsibility and that’s why they book with a travel agent, to take care of them. So we’re looking at September and of course, then you have another issue with the airport, which is crazy. They’re closing down for September, October, and November, to do up a runway which should have been dealt with before now. The most pent-up demand will be September, October, and even November, so the whole thing is very disappointing to be truthful.”
