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DNATA Travel will start issuing ‘overdue’ refunds from next week
DNATA Travel will next week start to process overdue payments to customers who have requested refunds for their cancelled trips.
CEO John Bevan apologised to clients and travel partners for the wait, saying the situation is unprecedented.
"Never has a crisis in the history of our industry reversed entire organisations in a matter of days, and never have bookings literally dried up," he said.
"This has been an exceptionally challenging period for our organisation. I would like to apologise to our clients and travel partners and thank them for their patience, and praise our people for their incredible efforts behind the scenes while we have worked to re-set our organisation to cope with the crisis.
"We have been working extremely hard to bring customers home, and transitioning our team and processes from handling large volumes of new bookings to a sudden mass of cancellations."
Refunds are being processed in a strict departure date order on a rolling weekly basis.
Payments will start being made from May 4 for those who were due to depart week commencing March 22.
Travel Republic, Travelbag, Netflights and Sunmaster, and the trade-only brands Gold Medal and Travel 2, and the Global Travel Group, have begun to communicate expected payment dates to their customers and travel agent partners.
DNATA said customers who accepted a Refund Credit Note can rest assured those remain valid as per the terms and conditions.
A spokesman said the number of customers demanding refunds is higher than those asking to rebook, largely driven by the lack of clarity over when flight restrictions will be lifted.
Those who are rebooking are opting to travel in winter 2020/21 and spring 2021 with a particular interest in holidays in the Indian Ocean.
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Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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