Coronavirus News
A message from the director of Hidden History Travel.
I hope that all of you in our community of ‘Hidden Historians’ will experience the least possible disruption from the coronavirus situation. I have met or corresponded with most of you over the years whilst building Hidden History Travel, and I know that many of you will be feeling vulnerable at present. It is clear that community and responsibility to each other are now more important than ever.
With such a rapidly changing situation, both at home and abroad, I am sure all of you who are booked on a tour with us this year, or were thinking of doing so, are now feeling, to put it mildly, a degree of uncertainty. I am aware that you will be worried about health risks and financial implications so, as your tour operator, I want to reassure you that our first priority is your health and safety, and that we are also acutely aware of our legal and financial responsibilities to you.
As members of the Travel Trust Association, Hidden History Travel is receiving the most up-to-date and best possible advice on how to handle the situation. We will be in touch with you separately as necessary, but in the meantime I have set out in the section below an outline of our current procedures for both overseas and UK tours, and how these might affect your own decisions. These will be updated as necessary.
In short, we advise you to wait until hearing from us before taking any action. Our next confirmed tours are due to run in May and these are currently still due to run, although we will be continually assessing this in the coming weeks.
We have received some fabulous feedback from you over the years, and it is important to me that you continue to enjoy the tours you book with us. Running a small travel business has its risks, and travel these days seems repeatedly disrupted by crises, but we are determined to weather this latest situation and operate as many tours as we possibly can. We are also committed to looking forward by planning a great 2021 travel programme, and introducing some brand new UK-based tours which we hope to offer for later this year.
I have faith that we will all be travelling freely again soon and I ask you, as part of a valued and loyal community of Hidden Historians, for your continued faith in us as we all adjust, for the time being at least, to a new entity in our world.
With kind regards,
Simon Butler
Director of Hidden History Travel.
Our Current Procedures and Advice.
If you are booked on a confirmed overseas tour.
For our overseas tours we are following Foreign & Commonwealth Office guidelines, and monitoring airline notifications and government announcements. We cannot simply make our own decision to cancel an already confirmed overseas tour due to the virus because this could have financial implications for you. Most airfares, for example, are recoverable only if the airline cancels your flight, and in the case of COVID-19 at present this is mainly happening only if the FCO issue a restriction on travel to the destination, and your flight is reasonably imminent. We are closely monitoring all airline notifications and will be in touch with you accordingly.
If you are booked on a confirmed UK tour.
For our UK tours, we are monitoring UK government guidelines as the situation unfolds, and will be in touch with you separately as soon as any significant developments are announced. There is currently no time frame for this, and we do not want to cancel your tour unnecessarily. We are looking at the possibility of rescheduling any cancelled tours for later in the year.
General advice.
If you are booked on one of our confirmed springtime tours, whether in the UK or abroad, our current financial advice is to wait until you hear from us before considering cancelling your place, otherwise you may be subject to normal cancellation fees and be referred to your travel insurance.
