Over the last few weeks, with the introduction of reduced quarantine and the vaccine programme being launched, we had hoped that things would start looking up for suppliers in general as well as for those travellers who wanted to get away for some winter sun. But sadly, with the turn of events late last week, those encouraging developments have had to take a step aside whilst we manage yet more changes to the travel landscape. Some countries are shutting their borders to UK flights whilst others have introduced stricter needs for negative PCR tests prior to stepping onboard the outbound flight. Throw into the mix, the uncertainty of the UK Brexit plans and the soon to be inaugurated US President and we have a big mixing bowl of different ingredients, all of which need to be communicated in the best way and at the right time.
At Focus, we have an amazing central digital platform – our Extranet – which all our TMC Partners have access to. This private platform allows us centrally to upload information and keep it updated as quickly as it’s received. We have sub-pages which focus on questions and information about Brexit as well as topics such as PSD2 or our new Trees4Travel programme. Our supplier partners have their own pages onto which we load their policies and news, all of which changes on an extremely regular basis.
Although we’ll be taking a few days off over the Christmas break, we will continue to keep an eye out for the most relevant news that our TMC Partners might need and upload it to our Extranet as quickly as we can. The value of working together in sharing information has never been as key as it is right now, and we are so proud of how we have managed this to date and excited about how we can continue to keep everyone engaged with relevant information in the future. Wishing you good health as we edge towards Christmas and what we all hope is a successful and positive 2021 ahead of us.