Emergency Call Protocol
Emergency Call Protocol for Travel Agents
When a client is stranded at an airport or denied entry at a hotel, your response time determines if you keep a $5,000 commission or lose a client forever. This protocol ensures you handle travel crises professionally while protecting your personal time and business reputation.
Defining a True Travel Emergency
Not every phone call is a crisis. A client wanting to change a dinner reservation for a honeymoon three months away is a standard task, not an emergency. A true emergency is an 'In-Transit' issue that prevents travel or affects safety. This includes flight cancellations, denied boarding, lost passports, or a hotel 'walking' a guest because they are overbooked. By clearly defining these scenarios in your client agreement, you prevent non-urgent calls from interrupting your work on high-value $2,000+ vacation packages.
Key takeaway: Classify emergencies only as events affecting travel within the next 24 hours or immediate physical safety.
The Triage Decision Tree
When an emergency call comes in, you must decide if it requires an immediate drop-everything response. If a client is at the gate and their PNR (Passenger Name Record) is showing as cancelled, that is a Tier 1 priority. If they are at a hotel and the room is just 'not what they expected,' that is Tier 2. You can use SkipCalls to filter these incoming calls; the AI receptionist can ask if the caller is currently at the airport or hotel, allowing you to stay on the line with suppliers for your Tier 1 clients while the AI takes a message for others.
