How Coronavirus Killed The Travel Industry

How Coronavirus Killed The Travel Industry

I have been blogging for years, writing columns about the travel business for the past 2 years and self-published my memoirs of my nomadic life in 'A Modern African Nomad' in 2016 so the next logical step was to start a travel business. After careful research I found a host agency called '58 Stars Travel' in Bothell, Washington started training to become an independent consultant (IC) in January 2020. I liked the fact that they did not charge their contractors for training and they were part of 'Travel Leaders' one of the biggest luxury travel consortiums in the world. I was part of 6 freshmen ICs, 2 from out of state on conference call, to be trained by Mike Salvadore, a former ad exec and  co-owner of the agency. It took me almost 2 hours and 2 buses each way to get to 58 Stars in Bothell from Bellevue. The first time I went to meet the team, I took time to explore Bothell, a small town where the highlight is the delightful Anderson School, an old schoolhouse which houses 3 restaurants. Classes were once a week and it became a joke that every time I went out there, it was pouring with rain. I was unfamiliar with the buses and took the wrong bus back the first couple of times so I got home feeling cold and miserable but I was determined to learn the trade. Classes were fun and Mike was a font of knowledge. ICs were invited when hotel owners and travel suppliers came to present at the agency. In February took the opportunity to attend a one-day seminar with Virtuoso, the leading luxury travel consortium, in New York City, at 'The Pierre' hotel. It was great to visit my favorite city, meet with other travel industry veterans and IC hopefuls. The lady who was running the event actually knew Mike Salvadore and tried to recruit me but Virtuoso charges for training and I appreciated even more that I had a good deal with Mike at '58 Stars'. I have such an awesome weekend with my friends in New York City and I am glad I had gone when I did because the world was about to change.

Almost as soon as my profile went live on the 'Travel Leaders' website, as an Africa destination specialist, I started getting queries for group trips to Africa. I had a family reunion going to Ghana, a couple of missionary groups going to Nigeria, vacations to South Africa and people in my US network wanting to go back home to Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, etc. I also planned a group trip to Paris, Versailles and the champagne region of France for Easter which was getting a lot of interest. I started broadcasting 'The Africa Travel Show, on Channel A TV and started the Seattle Travel Meetup then hosted a fun happy hour at the W hotel in Bellevue to meet potential clients. I am a news junkie so I had been following the Coronavirus crisis in Wuhan closely and it started to come up in the trade emails from the travel agents' groups. One by one all my groups going to Africa canceled their plans. It was the worst time to enter the travel industry. I don't do cruises but I felt for those agents that book cruises because they were the first to get hit. Meanwhile, our travel training had become bi-weekly and the last time I went to the agency was for a marketing session from New Frontiers, a destination management company from Durban, South Africa. It was so awesome to meet travel professionals from Africa and we exchanged details.

I had take a job with H & R Block in January to give me the flexibility to train as an IC and the manager was pretty understanding when I needed time off to go to Bothell but on the days I worked, I would work up to 12 hours a day to make up for the low pay. One morning I had just started work when I got a call about an emergency at my house in South Africa. I let my manager  know that I had to travel to Africa urgently, bought a one-way ticket on South African Airways (SAA) for that night because I didn't know when I would be coming back and spent the day packing. Seattle was already the epicenter of Coronavirus cases in the US and the number of cases was growing. On SeaTac my Uber driver was complaining that business was down so he was happy to get an airport run, I flew Jet Blue to JFK, landed on a beautiful morning and felt sad that I could not go into New York City to see my friends. At that point everything was normal in the airport  and all the airport shops were open when I connected to Johannesburg. The red-eye flight from SeaTac to JFK takes 6 hours, plus the 3 hour layover then the grueling 14 hour flight to Johannesburg so this was not an easy trip. The SAA flight felt endless and I was a zombie by the time I arrived only to be thrown into the chaos that I had gone to solve. South Africa is a very difficult country and I realize that now I can't live there anymore. When you live in the US, people in Africa think you are made of money and they try to scam you at every turn. There were some bright spots, like when I reached out to 'New Frontiers' and they organized a tour of the new Victoria Yards creatives' venue, which I live-streamed on Facebook, https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157309631397695&id=676762694. For the first time ever I was staying in short-term housing at Sandton Executive Suites, not my own house, which was sad.

With my niece and nephew in Johannesburg

I had not been to Zimbabwe since I left on 31 March 2019 so I took the opportunity to go to Harare and see everyone. I stayed in an Airbnb in Mt. Pleasant with a friendly young guy. Harare was still lovely and sunny but people are clearly facing hard times. Everyone was looking a bit worn out but cheerful. It was a great visit, it was good to see friends and family, I even saw my dog, Bronxie, who is as playful as ever, with a toy in mouth. I went back to Johannesburg for 2 more challenging days. This time I stayed with an old friend who I had not seen for a while so it was great to catch up with her. Everything in those 2 days was a struggle; from the car that was coming to meet me which broke down to my phone completely crashing because of the power surges to us arriving at Makro wholesaler after it had closed on a Sunday. I was at the Maslow hotel in Sandton, getting an Uber to my friend's when South African President Cyril Ramaphosa came out on TV to announce that the country was taking emergency measures to combat the spread of Coronavirus. They had a few cases of people who had come back from China and there were South Africans teaching English in Wuhan who were stranded there. The next day I was leaving but I had a hectic day driving around with the electrician buying solar equipment for my house then I was dropped off at the airport. The cheapest one-way ticket back to Seattle I found was $900 on Turkish Airlines so this whole trip had cost me $2000 for flights alone. The ground staff where confused by new regulations from the government which said that anyone who had traveled to China, the EU or Iran within the past 14 days could not leave South Africa. Why they would want to stop infected people from leaving their country? I was almost stopped at the gate until I showed that I had flown in from JFK, not Europe. This time most passengers were wearing masks as we boarded the flight. When I had worn mine on the way out of Seattle, people had looked at suspiciously but 10 days later, it was the norm. The flight to Istanbul was easy and the layover short. I collected my luggage at JFK and took the train to a different terminal. I wore my mask but New Yorkers are way too friendly. They kept coming close to me and talking. This time most of the shops in the airport were closed but nobody was social distancing at the burger joint or the bar as they chatted away to each other in close proximity. I waited 20 minutes for a takeout burger, called friends in New York then headed to the gate for my flight home. I arrived back to find Seattle a ghost town and soon after the governor announced a two-week shut down which has since been extended until 4 May. I am grateful that I got the chance to visit South Africa and Zimbabwe again because who knows when we will be allowed to start traveling again? Right now there are no flights allowed in or out of South Africa and Zimbabwe. I have a Zimbabwean friend who stuck in the US who can't go back home and I know several people who are stuck in Zimbabwe who can't get back to the UK. A private jet company from Mauritius, Vimana Jets, had a jet flying out of Harare last week and I think Ethiopian Airways was the last commercial airline still flying into Harare. If I had waited one more day I would have been stranded in South Africa right now. I am so glad that I am social distancing in Bellevue, WA, in my own home.

It will take a long time for the travel industry to recover and the world will never be the same but eventually people will travel again. We never thought we would see the whole world shut down like this. Hotels are cheap right now, AirBnBs are empty but people are not allowed to move around. The cruise industry has been hit especially hard and in spite of numerous discounts, it will take much longer to recover. Last week I saw ex weatherman, Seth Wayne, who had left KOMO station to become a spokesman for Holland America Cruise Lines, being interviewed from a ship that was not allowed to dock after 2 people onboard had died of Covid19. Eventually people will need to travel again and when they do, my travel agent profile is, https://www.travelleaders.com/travel_agent/agent-details.aspx?id=168932&ref=agent_search_results&txtAgentName=&slctState=WA&slctMetro=&slctCity=&slctInterest=&slctDestination=Africa&slctLanguage=&slctSupplier