May 11, 2020 TnH Global

‘RezLive is Well-Positioned to Withstand Unprecedented Circumstances and Help Partners’

By Prem Kumar

The COVID-19 has done immeasurable damage to the world’s travel and tourism industry, with many travel companies finding it hard to bear this unprecedented onslaught of nature. However, there are a few which are successfully navigating through this crisis. One such company is Travel Designer Group. TnH spoke to the Group’s Chief Operating Officer TIRATH SHAH to know how his organisation is responding to COVID-19 crisis. “Due to the unparalleled impact COVID-19 is having on the international travel industry, both cancellations and future bookings have been badly affected. However, as we are a global travel company having robust financial health, we are well-positioned to both withstand these unprecedented circumstances and help our travel partners fully benefit from the recovery when it occurs,’’ said Tirath Shah.

As social distancing is deemed to be the most important precautionary measure to evade this calamity, Shah informed that his company resorted to balancing the safety of its employees and the business needs of our partners through adapting a few operational and procedural upgrades. They are as followings:

Homeworking: To both protect the health of our employees and ensure business continuity, the majority of our staff globally have been working from home. They are equipped with the required technology to work effectively and we have provided them with up-to-date health and safety guidance.
Operational staffing: We have momentarily put in place amplified staffing levels at our operational support centres to respond to the high demand for re-bookings and support on cancellations/refund.
Keeping our travel partners updated: We are in continual contact with our travel partners to support them at this difficult time by speeding up cancellation request wherever required and thus by ensuring they do not get into a liquidity crisis during these difficult times.
Collaborating with our hotel/supplier partners: We are adjusting contracts with our hotel and supplier partners in line with the current context of travel restrictions, hotel closures and flight cancellations.

The Group’s online platform RezLive.com is known for its service standards and commitment towards its travel partners to help them in difficult times and COVID-19 is one such situation, wherein RezLive.com is encouraging all its travel partners to advice their end clients to either change the travel dates to a suitable future month. Shah says: “In case of cancellation, all our teams are working round the clock to assist the agents with cancellation and processed over 90% of refunds initiated to the original mode of payment by clients and not in a form of credit note by negotiating with our service providers.” Apart from that, Shah added, “We have even offered amendment flexibility on all our future bookings until the COVID-19 situation eases out, in order to help our travel partners with the current situation and continue being their preferred booking system.”

As regards their plans for the post-lockdown time, Shah pointed out that RezLive.com encompasses the idea that work should be challenging, and the challenge should be fun. “The current ambiguity and rough patch are only a temporary slowdown which will push us hard to strive forward and meet our end goals. While we cannot control the duration of this slowdown, what best we can do is to plan for our short- and long-term growth and expansion goals. So, we think this is an ideal time to sit and see where we are and where we want to move with our dedicated team, which is going to take us to great heights. Therefore, we look forward to opening up of the markets in order to help our travel partners with their fresh booking request like before and always stand by them.”

At the start of this year, the company has launched a new platform REZ2020. Talking about the launch Shah said, “One of our main goals was to make RezLive.com UI more user-centric while also keeping travel partners updated on all important events and timelines. Since continuous feedback and open communication is the key to our routine at RezLive.com, it allowed us to gauge what the travel partners needed. So, we added those features into a better looking ‘REZ2020′ platform which is compatible with all devices and multi-linguistic and caters to a larger market while keeping the communication gaps minimal.” Shah added, “This along with the fact that we are probably one of the fastest B2B travel booking systems in the market, makes our users feel valued which in return makes us one of the most sought-after reservation systems in the industry.”