The first comment to make regarding the volcano induced chaos in the Alps is “Thank the gods it didn’t happen in mid February”. Doesn't bear thinking about.As luck would have it I was out in the mountains when the volcano decided to blow it’s top. Once again I sacrifice my own comfort to bring first hand experience to the Ski Famille blog!
After 15+ years in the travel industry it’s easy to get a bit blasé and convinced you’ve seen everything before. I hadn’t put volcanic eruption contingency plans in the resort manuals – a careless oversight.
My first reaction to hearing about the eruption and the suspension of flights (including my own on 16th April was “You are joking”… although I think there may have been another word in between “are” and “joking”.
As information started to come through it was challenging to convince guests that they would not be flying home as planned due to an Icelandic volcano. Those with Internet access were fine, those without were looking into the corners of rooms for hidden cameras.
Whilst we are not a flight inclusive tour operator it became obvious pretty early on that we couldn’t simply drive people to the airport on Saturday morning as if nothing had happened and we had fulfilled our responsibilities. Chartering a coach was the only sure fire way of moving significant numbers of people in one hit and with any certainty.
Most guests quickly bought into this plan and accepted that it was the only option with any predictability re availability, arrival time in the UK and cost. Some did go it alone and got lucky picking up train tickets in Geneva – it was a gamble not many were prepared to take with children in tow.
After an extra day in the mountains (which our Reberty guests certainly made the most of) all of our remaining clients psyched themselves up for an early start on Sunday 18th April followed by an epic road trip.
I was wavering at this point (nothing to do with an exceptionally late night with our Resort Manager which had included hitching a lift on a piste basher from Reberty to possibly the worst night club in the Alps). I really wanted to get home but a vision of 15 hours on a coach with other people’s children kept flashing in front of my eyes.
I love our guests dearly but I wasn’t 100% convinced that that amount of contact was going to gain any of us very much. At the end of the season I was simply too tired to cope with the coach driver not stopping to allow little Tommy to be sick/have a poo/buy some food/have a run about being my fault. There you go, I’ve admitted it, there is a limit to my customer service ethos!
After much head scratching I decided to go it alone on the Monday rather than get on the coach. I did however get up at 5 in the morning to ensure everyone got on the bus with the correct number of bags, sandwiches, bottles of water and children. It was a genuine relief to see them all heading off and know that they were no longer amongst the stranded Brits abroad the Daily Mail was shouting about in angry capital letters.
After a bit more kip Monday became about getting myself home. Plan A was a train, Plan B a one way hire car to the channel to grab foot passenger space on a ferry. Plan A was going nowhere fast. Websites and phone lines (whether British, French or Swiss) were unable to give me the answers I needed.
After a period of inertia I decided that the only approach was to get off my butt, hit the road and see what happened. En-route to Geneva to try and grovel with hire car firms I decided to dive into Moutiers SNCF station and see if I could get anywhere on a train by talking to a real live person.
I prepared myself for huge queues of angry tired skiers trying to get home and launched myself into the ticket hall. I queued in silence behind a lone French pensioner buying a ticket to go to Limoges and within 10 minutes had a ticket for the next morning all the way through to London. It wasn’t cheap and it was genuinely the last Eurostar ticket available that day but I was going home.
Chris
www.skifamille.co.uk
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