Full refunds a slippery slope

WITH interest in taking ski trips over the northern winter period gaining traction in the lead-up to a resumption of international travel in Dec, Ski Travel Company Manager Melissa Cowley has cautioned that travellers should be prepared to wear some of the cost in the event of cancellations due to external events.

Cowley’s call follows a devastating loss of income for her business following the collapse of the trans-Tasman bubble.

“We worked day and night for NZ trips and when you convert more than a million dollars in sales over a couple of months and to end up with nothing is heartbreaking,” she said.

Ski Travel Company told TD it recently amended its terms and conditions to include a small cancellation fee which Cowley said is designed to ensure her business is not left completely out of pocket for all of the work that goes into arranging ski trips.

“It just gives us a bit more confidence...if we end up with enough to break even or even cover our wages then it builds the confidence to really commit ourselves and our staff,” she said.

Cowley added that the business had noted an upswing in ski enquiries for northern hemisphere ski trips over the last couple of weeks, especially in light of Air Canada recently filing four weekly Sydney-Vancouver frequencies effective 17 Dec (TD 06 Sep), however up until last week, the company had been deterring people to book until it was confident that international borders would definitely open in the coming months.

“We want nothing more than be able to say ‘let’s book it, let’s get people to Canada’ and just in the last week we have started to ramp it all up and prepare our packages and get everything going again and we’re open for business, but we just need to find the right balance of procedures moving forward,” Cowley said.