We wanted to take this opportunity to update everyone on our international Expedition Dive Travel for the remainder of 2020, an update which also applies equally to our domestic LUXE private charters on the Great Barrier Reef.
“Like everything that sets us apart, we do dive travel differently”
Well, keeping true to those words, we also do cancellation differently. We are a Customer focused company and always have been, our industry leading booking policy has always offered the highest levels of flexibility and beyond that we have always acted to take the individual Customer into account – we can hold our head high and say we have never declined a rebooking or cancellation refund – EVER. This is why our Customer have the confidence to book with us up to 18 months ahead.
“We treat our customers with the respect and consideration, we ourselves would like to receive – This extends to our Cancellation Policy. It’s a refreshing difference you’ll enjoy. We simply call it good Customer Service.”
What now seems like an eternity ago, back on Jan 17th, on the advice of our Compliance Risk and Diligence advisors, we took our first steps under our BCP protocols to meet our obligations to both our Guests and Staff with the emerging COVID19 crisis, this initially included additional PPE measures for all transport and travel both Domestic and International; increased office, warehouse and vessel cleaning; and working with our partners – Airlines, Hotels, Vessel operations and Transfer companies to ensure all appropriate mitigation measures were in place and being managed. We also started contacting Customers with cancellation or reschedule options for all Expedition and Dive services.
By mid-February, we had effectively stopped all travel and in water dive activities, with this being formalised in writing on March 2nd to all guests, with a suspension announced till July 30th as a minimum. We have now extending this till the end of 2020.
At this point we had been working pre-emptively for several weeks with guests to cancel and refund or rebook all services for the first half of the year, and were also engaged with travel insurance underwriters and third party operators where necessary on behalf of you our Customers.
We are happy to report that we have arranged fee free refunds or rebooking (at your discretion) for all Expedition Dive or LUXE charter for the remaindered of 2020. No mean feat in less than 90 days from our small team and we thank our travel partners for working with us to achieve this outcome.
“It’s the putting right that counts”.
In effect, we will operate no Expedition Dive Trips or LUXE Great Barrier Reef charters in the remainder of the 2020 season. Should later in the year social distancing and travel bans be reduced to a degree to allow some diving activity again, we have some fantastic unique domestic Expedition Dive Trips planned out – which we’ll announce at that juncture – we know you all want to get back in the water!
To the Future, 2021 and beyond…
We are now booking the 2021-2022 season, which effectively kicks off late February 2021, and we thank you to those who have elected to rebook their 2020 bookings to 2021 with us already, and we look forward to assisting many more of you, with our new 2021-2022 offerings live on the site now – you can check them out here.
In the meantime, we are just an email or phone call away. Our thanks to everyone who has been in touch and shared their stories with us.
