A corporate incentive trip
CASE STUDY
The challenge
There is nothing more stressful for a traveller than having a flight cancelled at the last minute, leaving them stranded in another country. Well, this is exactly what happened to our client: a group booking of 70 employees who had been in the US on a corporate incentive trip.
During this time, they were attending an awards dinner and were due to fly back to the UK the next day. However, at approximately 4:30 AM, their return flight with BA was cancelled with no explanation.
As soon as they became aware of the situation, the trip organiser reached out to their BTG Travel Management representative in a panic, as they tried to contend with 70 employees now stuck in the US.
The solution
Unfortunately, BA didn’t simply rebook the group on to the next flight and being early hours of the morning, we were unable to get through to BA in the UK. So instead, we fought to get in touch with the BA group in the US.
Although we got through, as this was not the country of departure, the BA team was still unable to rebook our client’s group onto another flight home.
With employees beginning to feel the stress, our team went down to Heathrow and stood at the BA desk until every single member of the group was booked onto a flight home.
It might have been an unconventional tactic, but our group travel agents were so dedicated to getting the group back to the UK as quickly and seamlessly as possible that we went to Heathrow in person and refused to leave.
In doing so, we were able to ensure that no one was left stranded in the US.
Off the back of this event, BA realised that they needed to introduce an out-of-hours service in the UK. As a result, a new procedure was put in place to make this happen.
The client was so impressed, not just because we were so dedicated to the group and getting them back as quickly as possible, but because the team at BTG Travel had the power to influence one of the biggest airlines in the world.
