While nobody could have anticipated the impact COVID-19 has had on all our lives, the impact on travel and tourism in all its forms and sectors has been what one could only describe as cataclysmic, as it appears has some rather unsavoury behaviour by some operators.
While that has been bad enough, it appears that some operators in the industry have not behaved as ethically and morally appropriately as they might in the area of refunds to travellers that entrusted their often hard-earned funds to them, to provide them with the travel they booked, with some operators no delivering what they promised and holding on to the clients’ money.
I have to say I find that behaviour not only reprehensible and highly immoral, but also unethical and it should be commercial suicide for the operators who pursue that approach, but it has been what has been going on in many situations in Australia, with many Aussies many thousands out of pocket because operators will not refund them for travel which has not taken place through no fault of the clients.
While some of us have been reporting on this debacle for some time, CHOICE recently undertook a survey, which revealed to the champions of consumer rights in Australia that very few have been given refunds after travel plans were cancelled due to COVID-19.
The report revealed that: fewer than one in five (17%) of those surveyed received a full refund, and even then it often took many months to do so; many consumer who’ve received credits or vouchers said they were unlikely to be able to use them; and nine out of ten respondents saying Australia’s laws should be changed to make it easier to get money back.
This was no small survey, with in March 2021, 3,865 of the 4,295 people who responded (90%) saying the law should be changed in Australia to make it easier to get a refund.
In addition, the report says that for many, refunds or other remedies took more than six months to arrive, with Australian travellers not happy about travel businesses holding on to their money for so long or about not getting it back at all, with this causing significant uncertainty and doubt in consumers’ minds about who to book with in the future, with many Australians have lost trust in the travel industry.
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AloJapan.com