Trench Talk With Matt Reynolds

Andy Buerckner is a Director at Platinum Travel Corporation. Platinum Travel is a family owned and operated agency with offices in Australia and New Zealand, they won both the Travel Agency of the Year in 2018 and the Corporate Travel Agency of the Year in 2019. I wanted to talk to Andy for this episode after I watched an interview he did recently for the Sky Business channel where he spoke about the travel industry and how the current coronavirus pandemic has decimated almost the entire sector. Many providers in the travel space including not only travel agents, like Platinum, but airlines, hotels, tour companies, cruise ship operators etc. have all seen their revenue drop to virtual zero overnight. But it gets worse, and here’s the bit I hadn’t thought about until I watched the Sky Business interview. Not only did their revenue stop, they had to start the process of handing back past profits in the form of refunds as travellers began to ask for their money to be returned due to enforced travel restrictions.