Mundy Cruising managing director Edwina Lonsdale tells Cruise Trade News that while there is much negativity surrounding the travel industry and the wider world due to the coronavirus outbreak, there is always light at the end of the tunnel.

Last week my mother left her home of over 50 years to stay with my sister ‘for the duration’. She mused on the fact that it was a whole 80 years, give or take a couple of months, since she was last evacuated from London, at the age of 13.

What a time that must have been for our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents – children evacuated to unknown locations to live with strangers, young sons leaving for the front line, black-outs, genuine food shortages, and bombs falling.  It really could be worse.

I don’t mean to underplay the challenges we all face – to be working flat out for zero or negative income is demotivating and demoralising, and while the government is offering all sorts of assistance, nothing is clear-cut or simple.

Furloughing super-busy staff is not really feasible, and it is not at all clear if travel agents and tour operators are even included in the business rates holiday for all retail and leisure firms.

Even as things pick up, we will need to work to rebuild passenger confidence, firm up all the rollover business while looking for new travellers, and continue to deal with ongoing administrative issues.

Currently, as well as the challenges to the business, we are dealing with mental health and anxiety in our staff and our clients, adopting positions of calm and authority when we do not necessarily feel either calm or authoritative.

To counter this picture, let’s weigh up the positives. The warmth of our travel colleagues reaching out to support each other, the kindness of our clients whose heartwarming messages of concern lighten our days, and the generosity of our travel partners as they work with us to protect our livelihoods, are all pointers to the very reason we are passionate about our industry: the very human and personal quality of our relationships.

As soon as there is light at the end of the tunnel, our customers will want things to look forward to, and be determined to reward themselves for their stoical forbearance through these dark days.

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