'This crisis has shown our time is valuable – and needs monetising'

Over the years I have found myself saying over and over again “if we can get through this, we can get through anything”.

Remember the volcanic ash cloud, 9/11, adverse weather, ongoing industrial action and Brexit?

Well, never have those words been more true. While many of us used to say this flippantly, this is now a very real situation for every business in the travel industry.

As a business owner, like many of you, I’ve had to make some very tough decisions about my company, and will continue to do so, but it has made me think hard about how I want my business to operate – in the long term and how to minimise the massive vulnerability that we are currently facing.

Everyone is working twice as hard for half or no income right now.

We are all trying to minimise cancellations, as many of us will have already spent/used/invested these funds two months ago, in running our businesses.

We all want clients to rebook for a future date or hold that money as a credit, so that right now we don’t have to find money we don’t have.

But while this is wonderful in the short term, these clients will then not be booking their holidays further down the line and we will have to weather that loss of business or look for ways to increase revenue.