House Of Travel Details Customers in Bali

House Of Travel Details Customers in Bali

The following is a statement from Brent Thomas Retail Director from House of Travel

Following the news of the Bali bombings this morning, House of Travel's disaster recovery team has been following its standard plan when situations such as this occur.

Since 5.30am (New Zealand time) this has involved running reports to ascertain how many customers House of Travel has in Bali currently and how many customers we have who are about to depart for Bali.

We know we have a total of 96 customers in Bali, which relates to 33 groups of people.

Geographically we have 44 passengers from the Waikato and Northern regions, 21 from the Wellington and Central North Island and 31 from the South Island.

The process which now occurs is that the owner operators from the various outlets with customers in Bali have been notified and they are currently attempting to locate these customers and determine firstly that they are okay and secondly whether they wish to change their travel plans. Given that it is still the early hours in the morning in Bali and the overloading of the phone lines this could take some time, however outlets are reporting reasonable success and have located at least half of their customers in Bali at the time this email was written.

House of Travel has identified there are 101 customers who were booked to travel to Bali in the next 14 days.

These customers will also be contacted in a priority order of those leaving to determine what they wish to do given the most recent bombings.

At this stage the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have not upgraded their travel warning to Bali which currently advises against all non essential and tourist travel to Bali. House of Travel will relay this information to customers who have booked to travel in the short term but the decision as to whether customers travel or not will be our customers.

Many customers contacted to date were taking a wait and see approach before making any immediate decision to delay or cancel their travel plans.

House of Travel is working closely with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs updating them on the whereabouts and status of our customers in Bali.

While this is high season for tourists travelling to Bali, since the Bali bombings three years ago House of Travel has adhered to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs warnings on their website regarding Bali. This has meant House of Travel has refrained from advertising Bali or promoting it proactively as a holiday destination.

While we have sold holidays to Bali this has been when a customer has enquired about Bali as a destination. The number of Kiwis travelling to Bali has significantly decreased since the initial Bali bombings and the remained terrorist alert status on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.

House of Travel said it was too early to say what the long term effect would be on the tourism trade to Bali, however the timing was extremely sad for the Balinese people who were just starting to see tourism numbers return to numbers seen three years ago. While House of Travel would continue to book travel for customers wanting to visit Bali while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs warning remained on the website it would continue to be a destination House of Travel would not actively promote to its customers.

ENDS

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