Tales from the Front Lines - Randy McKeown, TTAND

TravelPulse Canada is proud to support Travel Advisors around the globe. Our "Tales From The Front Lines" series is designed to give consultants a voice during the COVID crisis and bring professionals together. Enjoy today's submission.

"I am a home based agent with The Travel Agent Next Door. I just transferred to TTAND at the beginning of the year and was rebranding myself after being with various different Travel Agencies over the past 7 years. I was trying to figure what I was doing when news of a Pandemic hit.

Maybe this was bad timing, or maybe it was good timing. TTAND has been great in keeping agents engaged, informed and hopeful. I had reached out to my clients and letting them know that I had made a move and explain to them why I made the move. I believe I was still in the learning stage and was okay from an income point of view that I didn't have to worry how I was going to pay the bills.

I was naive at the beginning based on media reports and even stated publicly that I would travel to China and Italy as I believe it was just a few cases. To my surprise, it was not just a few cases and it was growing globally and "boom" the hammer fell and all travel stopped.

As more and more news stories came out about people stranded, unable to find ways home and then the Future Travel Credits rather than refunds and Future Cruise Credits rather than refunds, my clients seemed less and less interested in travel and could not understand the insurance aspect. I spent a lot of time talking to clients or potential clients about travel restrictions, insurance and how it works and tried to reason about FTC's and FCC's.

I also wanted to help my fellow agents within the TTAND community and presented on some options for how agents needed to contact the Federal Government in requesting benefit support. The information was presented to Corporate, Flemming and I reviewed it and he shared it with the agents. I feel for agents and their families.

Updates where happening almost hourly and no one knew what the rules were, and when the did, they changed again. As some agents are trying to cancel reservations and others are trying to get their guests home, the stress on them was and is intense.

I try to stay positive and have been using this time to come up with a Podcast entitled "Passports and Postcards" a series aimed at getting people to dream of travelling again. The podcast has not launched as of yet, still in the planning and production, getting familiar with the tech part of it.

I have also used the time to take some personal growth courses through Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College of London and even completed my Ontario Smart Serve Certificate...it is all about taking a negative and turning it into a positive.

As travel opens up again, I will be ready, I want to ensure that my clients are safe and understand all the health and safety measures that will be in place. A big shout out to industry suppliers, BDM's and the travel media for keeping us informed on all that is happening."