I had the news last Thursday that the trip I booked to Peru in June is not running due to low numbers and wondered whether you had considered an option for us to register an alternative when we make our original booking.
Like so many others I have a list of tours I want to do but the constraints of work mean I have limited holiday and limited dates for travel. When I booked it was down to Peru or Borneo and I picked Peru as I was concerned that as the trip has been running a while it might be rested soon.
Sally Mullen in your office has been fantastic in her efforts to try to find an alternative trip, the travelsphere option didn't work for me due to work commitments, however there were still a couple of places showing on the Borneo trip, the flights were available but after a lot of hard work Sally was unable to get the hotel rooms so had to give me the bad news that I couldn't go to Borneo in June either.
I accept that as a commercial operation you can't run these trips without minimum numbers, so this is where my idea comes in; if I were able to register a second choice (in this case Borneo) at the point you are about to return any unused allocation to the airline and hotels, are you able to run a report on those who have this as their second choice to be able to flag to them whether their first choice has met the minimum numbers and if it hasn't the traveller could then make an informed decision as to whether to switch trips? This could potentially save your team in the office a lot of work phoning around to try and get travellers on alternative trips and also mean disappointments avoided.
As an alternative if extra information could be provided on the website showing the current status against minimum numbers and the date unused allocations are to be returned those of us online could keep track and take appropriate action.
Thanks
Tim