Sto­ry by SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Trav­el agents are call­ing for a bailout from Gov­ern­ment, as they fear they may have to close their doors, as a re­sult of the dev­as­tat­ing im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic on the glob­al trav­el in­dus­try.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, sev­er­al trav­el agents ad­mit­ted to hav­ing se­ri­ous cash flow is­sues.

Zo­ri­na Az­iz, one of the di­rec­tors of Ire­na Trav­el and Tours, be­lieves Gov­ern­ment should bail out trav­el agents just as it did for ho­tels in To­ba­go and for Caribbean Air­lines, not­ing that they can pay their staff full salaries, be­cause of the state fund­ing boost.

Az­iz, who has been in the trav­el busi­ness for the last 38 years, said ho­tels, cruise lines  and air­lines de­pend heav­i­ly on trav­el agents at the ground lev­el for busi­ness.

She opened on Mon­day to sell tick­ets for the in­ter-is­land fer­ry, and told us the monies re­al­ized on the sale of fer­ry tick­ets are at the break-even lev­el, since most of the rev­enue earned is con­sumed in print­ing sup­plies and pay­ing a fer­ry clerk.

“Fer­ry tick­ets is­sued to trav­el agents by the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T are lim­it­ed in num­ber and fin­ish in less than a week,” she ex­plains. “For­tu­nate­ly, I have a reg­u­lar clien­tele us­ing my Cou­va op­er­a­tions, who oth­er­wise would have to go to Ch­agua­nas or San Fer­nan­do for fer­ry tick­ets.”

The trav­el in­dus­try vet­er­an re­vealed that the last three months have been hor­ri­ble for her staff who have had no in­come, nor were they able to re­ceive any salary as­sis­tant grants from Gov­ern­ment. She said her land­lords are de­mand­ing the rent, while the bank is of­fer­ing no as­sis­tance.

“Un­less gov­ern­ment makes some move to as­sist T&T’s 52 trav­el agents, the in­dus­try would col­lapse,” she warns. “The In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trav­el As­so­ci­a­tion—IA­TA—has al­ready pre­dict­ed that air trav­el would take three years to re­cov­er. Cor­po­rate trav­el would be lim­it­ed as com­pa­nies would now hold on­line meet­ings.”

An­oth­er trav­el in­dus­try play­er, Ra­jiv Dip­nar­i­nesingh, own­er of Dip­nar­i­nesingh’s Tours and Trav­el of Ch­agua­nas, said he does not want to see the bor­ders open un­til the COVID-19 cri­sis has end­ed.

“I be­lieve in the in­ter­im, the Gov­ern­ment should do some­thing to help keep trav­el agents from sink­ing in­to a deep­er eco­nom­ic pot-hole,” Dip­nar­i­nesingh said. “Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I had to send home all of my staff. They are strug­gling to make ends meet.”

Mean­while, David Sel­l­i­er, who op­er­ates  Sel­l­i­er’s Trav­el Ser­vice, from Port of Spain, told Guardian Me­dia that trav­el agents feel left be­hind by Gov­ern­ment.

“We do make up a per­cent­age of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, yet we get the feel­ing that we are some­how be­ing over­looked,” he points out. “We re­ly on the pub­lic to trav­el, take va­ca­tions/busi­ness trav­el etc. If the pub­lic is not do­ing so, then trav­el agents can­not make an in­come. Ho­tels were giv­en a grant as they re­ly on per­sons to trav­el, take va­ca­tions, go on busi­ness etc, just like trav­el agents.”

He adds: “Some trav­el agency own­ers right now have rent, util­i­ty bills to pay on two fronts—for their of­fice lo­ca­tion and res­i­dence. Many have kept all their staff and still pay salaries. Some have asked their staff to take a re­duced salary. All agency own­ers still have to pay tax­es NIS, health sur­charge, and so on. It is re­al­ly a tragedy what the agency own­ers, and by ex­ten­sion their staff, are go­ing through, as many are see­ing the need to close their doors per­ma­nent­ly.”

Sel­l­i­er re­ports that he had writ­ten a let­ter to Min­is­ter of Tourism, Ran­dal Mitchell, ask­ing for as­sis­tance for all trav­el agents. 

“The re­sponse was not favourable,” Sel­l­i­er said.  “We, the trav­el agents, un­der­stand that the gov­ern­ment is be­ing faced with an un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion and every­one is re­quest­ing a grant, but the re­ply from the min­istry was the mea­sures cre­at­ed by the gov­ern­ment to pro­vide sup­port for small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es. But many own­ers of trav­el agen­cies don’t see this op­tion as very sup­port­ive, as it of­fered as­sis­tance in the form of a loan. And many agency own­ers were ask­ing what would hap­pen if they can­not re­pay the loan? So, this in it­self, to many agency own­ers, was not a sup­port method,” he adds.