Thursday 12 / September / 2024
Muscat: Travel agents in Oman have been getting calls and visits from customers all day, as they try to rearrange bookings after the country’s ports of entry through land, air and sea were temporarily closed.
The decision, made by the Supreme Committee to deal with COVID-19, was taken to stop the spread of the disease, and is in effect for a week.
“We had so many customers at our main office that we had to put up chairs everywhere for them to wait, on both our ground and first floors,” explained Faiyaz Khan, general manager for Travel Point.
“We could only admit 50 persons into our office at a time, because of the social distancing measures, and needed to test their temperatures outside.
“We’ve received plenty of calls and messages from people who were either looking to fly into Oman or leave the country for a short while,” he added. “We have had to re-book them on flights, hoping the ruling only lasts for a week. If it is extended, though, then we’ll have to go through this all over again.”
Travel Point held an emergency meeting on Monday evening to decide how to help customers during the coming week.
“We have 200 staff and about 15 branches in the country, so we needed to coordinate on how to help passengers,” explained Khan. “We have asked our staff to be available to them, because this has affected all of their travel plans. For example, I had a call from the customer in Durban who wanted to come back to Oman, but he cannot return now for a while.
“Another customer went to India for an emergency for just a week, and was expecting to return here, but he has to wait, so we had to rebook him as well,” he said. “It is important that he returns because his wife and children are alone here. A lot of students who want to come to Oman have their parents calling us, asking to book alternate tickets for their children.
“Oman is one of the few countries in the world that had reopened to people after lockdowns were instituted globally, and we had about 200 passengers from India planning to come here for Christmas and New Year’s Eve,” Khan added. “Many of our customers have asked us for a refund and we have had to absorb some of the costs in doing so, but the ones who have planned their travels for the end of this year and January have held their bookings.”
Travel Point had also arranged repatriation charter flights for Algerian and Bangladeshi nationals in the country, which had to be called off because of the temporary border closure.
The Embassy of Algeria intervened so that the flight could be allowed to take off, but the plane to Bangladesh will now need to be postponed.
“We had a flight with more than 200 passengers going to Dhaka on Tuesday, and another one on Wednesday, but they have been cancelled or at least pushed forward now,” said Khan.
“We had all of these people in our office, asking us to send them home straight away, but we admitted we were helpless. What is concerning is that all of these people have taken their PCR tests, so we need to see if the government will allow them to fly without taking the test again.”
Junaid Zaib, the co-founder of Precise Travel, another travel agency in the country, had about 100 bookings made during this period, but has to now find alternate methods to accommodate customers, particularly since some airlines have still not been informed about the suspension of flights.
“I have, for example, a customer flying from Kiev to Muscat while transiting in between, and I have been trying to get him an alternative route, but the airline does not know what to do, because they say they have not received any confirmation from the relevant authorities,” he further revealed. “Obviously, I have to ask him not to board the flight, because he will not be allowed to fly forward from his transit point.
“The last seven months have been quite bad for the travel and the hospitality industry, so we hope this decision only lasts for the next few days,” Zaib said. “We have already begun taking bookings for next June, so people are hopeful the situations around the pandemic won’t last much longer, and the arrival of the vaccine will definitely help in that case,” Zaib further added.
