International travel is not for the faint of heart these days, and to keep clients updated on ever-changing policies, agencies rely on a dizzying mix of digital resources, creative initiatives, and dedicated staff.
Embark Beyond, for example, expanded its approach by adding a “Covid Expert” to the company’s team at the beginning of the year. The Covid expert, who switched to the role after last serving as Embark Concierge, is tasked with keeping the agency up to date with the latest travel logs while answering more complex questions about Covid rules from Embark consultants .
“As an agency or consultant, when it comes to travel and really giving people no excuses not to travel, you have to think about how to stay one step ahead and make your customers’ lives easier,” said Embark founder Jack Ezon.
A Covid expert has proven to be particularly valuable for travelers visiting or transiting multiple destinations, as well as those with younger children who are not eligible for a vaccination, Ezon added.
“It saved our consultants so much time,” he said. “In the beginning, our consultants spent half an hour or 45 minutes figuring out some of these things and when they could sell instead.”
Like many tour groups, Embark has tapped Sherpa, an online platform specializing in travel identification requirements, to stay abreast of various restrictions such as visa, passport, quarantine and Covid testing around the world. According to Sherpa’s website, the company collects its information by aggregating data from thousands of sources, including official government websites, on a daily basis.
While Sherpa is also a one-stop shop for Brownell Travel, the Birmingham, Alabama-based company has stepped up its efforts to resolve pandemic issues with a dedicated desk designed to deal with restrictive issues. The Travel Desk’s e-mail account is managed by a team of six.
Additionally, Brownell has set up several Slack channels that focus solely on Covid issues.
“We maintain a Slack workspace for the entire community with channels on a variety of topics, including Covid updates and Covid resources,” said Sheri M. Selkirk, COO at Brownell Travel. “So you have the Brownell community of around 200 people seeing your posts, and whoever can help you be more efficient and adapt to your client’s needs at that point will step in right away.”
So far, according to Selkirk, Brownell’s crowdsourcing solution hasn’t left a single question about travel restrictions unanswered.
“Everyone at the company is on Slack from our President Troy Haas down,” said Selkirk. “So we can cover all the basics, be it an operational question, a sales question or a Covid question.”
The tiered approach
According to John Rose, Chief Risk and Security Officer of Internova’s Altour division, the strategy for updating travel restrictions is similarly complex across the Internova Travel Group.
In addition to the Sherpa platform, which Internova has been using since September this year, the group has been using the support of a company called Exlog Global since August 2020.
“Exlog is able to provide the next level of support and they specialize in that human component,” said Rose.
“Suppose you are traveling with someone, but the person you are traveling with has a different passport. So if there is a question about it that the client or the advisor may not be clear, Exlog can work that out. “
Personal support from an exlog expert is available by email or phone, with Rose estimating that Internova typically answers “several hundred” questions from the exlog system each week.
If a Covid-related travel problem proves too difficult or unique for Sherpa or Exlog, the matter is escalated to an internal team within the organization.
The tiered approach “worked really well,” said Rose.
“Being able to offer this level of service is a unique selling point for Internova,” he added. “We can’t have a consultant who spends eight hours browsing 19 different websites and getting conflicting information because it won’t help anyone.”
As international travel continues to grow, Rose predicts it will be more important than ever to efficiently keep track of changes in travel logs.
“The world is opening up again, but it is being opened with restrictions and those restrictions won’t go away anytime soon,” said Rose. “That’s why the demand for tools like Sherpa and other levels of support is likely to increase, and it’s so important to think ahead and find solutions.”
At Signature Travel Network, members get access to a paid corporate account with Sherpa, which gives them the ability to create custom links that can be shared with customers, as well as embed Sherpa’s content right into their websites, emails, and itineraries channels .
Members can also choose to create their own white label version of the Sherpa site.
“Without a doubt, the biggest challenge facing a travel advisor today is keeping up with ever-changing border closings, visa requirements, Covid protocols, etc.,” said Jean Newman Glock, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at Signature.
