Holiday hopes for end of year

THE boss of a travel company hopes to be able to salvage at least some 2020 holiday trade as the lockdown eases.

Jonathan Hunt, of Roberts Travel Group in the north west of the county, said the company had been forced to cancel all holidays and furlough 100 staff.

He hopes his coach company will be able to offer some Christmas breaks at the very least, and could even provide some trips in the autumn – assuming coronavirus does not flare up again.

In the past few weeks he has brought back a couple of dozen staff from furlough to operate Park and Ride services.

Four redundancies have been made in the holiday and private hire sales team.

But, looking forward, he said there had been interest in some Christmas trips and he is hoping that some hotels will be able to start opening in September or October.

“During lockdown we had around 100 staff on furlough and we were almost at a standstill within the first 10 days as schools and other services stopped,” said Jonathan.

“We cancelled holidays up to the end of June and early July and offered everybody a refund – we didn’t want to lose trust by offering credit notes, although some were happy with that.

“As soon as we saw what was coming we moved our 2020 brochure over to next year, contracting all the same hotels and were able to transfer 25 per cent of the holidays we had booked to 2021.

“It’s been important to maintain our relationship with our customers. If I’m honest, I don’t think we will be operating holidays in August, but we don’t want to cancel too far ahead just in case something changes. We are cancelling a bit at a time, which is allowing us to manage it all.

“I’d like to think we will be doing holidays this year though.”