Bulletin 17 from Michael Edwards, Managing Director
Just over a year on from Lockdown 1.0 and little did we know the challenges and devastation this year would bring, across the world, country, and our much-loved industry. The travel industry, by nature, always seems to be the industry most affected by social, economic, political, and natural occurrences and the Covid-19 pandemic is no different – as we were the first industry impacted and likely we will be the last to return to some kind of normality.
However, it does serve as a stark reminder of how resilient our industry is – most of our partners, both airlines and tour operators, have found ways to adapt and sustain during the most challenging period in our industries history and the Travel Innovation Group is no different.
Across the group we have kept our customers at the heart of everything we do – We Are With You. All the enhancements we have made to our products, services and systems have been with you in mind, thinking about how we can make our customer experience easier and more efficient, given the challenges we are all facing. I have written more about these enhancements in section 3 of this bulletin and they include our Travel Innovation Group API, our Cache product and ticketing guidance reminders for our customers.
At the Travel Innovation Group, we have also always managed our finances prudently and this gave us a strong financial platform as we entered the Covid crisis last year. Throughout, we have continued to manage our finances carefully. We have also, this month, renewed our Lime and Aviate ATOLs and are in a strong and safe position to weather the remainder of the disruption until flying resumes.
In this vein, we are aware that the financial implications around the ATOL licencing and IATA are very stringent. Therefore, many of our customers who have solus ticketing agreements with us have been able to drop their IATA requirements completely - safe in the knowledge and confidence that Lime and Aviate will deliver a long term, cost effective flight provider and ticketing service for them.
If you would like to discuss how you can free yourself of the IATA requirements and agree terms, then please do not hesitate to contact Naomi Moizer or one of our partnership team on partnerships@travelinnovationgroup.com
Rest assured, ‘We Are With You’, we will continue to enhance our products and services and innovate new ways to assist you– we believe the hard miles are behind us and we look forward to a considered pathway to enable our mutual customers to commence flying once more and the world returning to a new normality…
This bulletin covers:
1 - Introduction
2 - Refunds status update
a. Flights
b. BSPLink
c. Groups
d. Long-delayed refunds ands Aviate actions
3 – We Are With You
a. Setting the foundations for recovery
b. Technology
i. Travel Innovation Group API
ii. Travel Innovation Group Cache
iii. Ticketing Guidance Reminders
iv. Low Cost Carriers
4 – Business and Partner Updates
a. Aer Lingus launches new direct routes from Manchester
b. Emirates NDC coming 1 July 2021
c. Virgin Atlantic Expanded Out of Date Range fares
d. British Airways Updates
i. Refundable IT fares
ii. Ticketing Deadline Policies on new IT bookings
iii. Longhaul summer schedule
e. LATAM – now available to book online again
f. Virgin Voyages third ship goes on sale
g. Aegean announce new direct flights to the Greek Isles
To read the full Bulleting please click here.