Helloworld plans for future

HELLOWORLD Travel (HLO) has pledged to continue to support its supplier partners across the globe, boasting of its “outstanding network of leaders and business development personnel who are working on our post-COVID strategies for 2021 and beyond”.

The company, which reported its annual results last night (see page 1 and TD breaking news), noted that despite the impact of coronavirus it continues to invest in technologies driving its corporate, wholesale and retail offerings “to ensure we have growth and productivity drivers in place as we emerge from the COVID-19 period”.

Operationally, Helloworld has so far paid out full or partial refunds worth more than $800 million in Australia and New Zealand, “with ticket refund turnarounds down to under seven weeks and wholesale and cruise refunds under control,” according to an ASX release from the company.

Over the last three months HLO’s corporate business in Australia and New Zealand had recovered to about 35% of previous year volumes in Jul, “and we expect this to increase from Oct as state borders open up again,” the company said.

Through the downturn, the company had also managed to generate some revenue by using its call centres to perform contact tracing services on behalf of state health organisations since Apr.

CEO Andrew Burnes said he believed that after the pandemic passes travel experiences will be even more treasured.

“We have been providing professional travel services to our customers for over 60 years.

“And we will be there on the other side of this for our customers for the next 60 years and beyond,” he promised.