MSG Tours and the Coronavirus
“Stay calm, wash your hands and listen to the experts”
Those are the words posted on Twitter by a certain Barack Obama about Coronavirus. He’s pretty wise, so we’ll heed his advice.
Protect yourself and your community from coronavirus with common sense precautions: wash your hands, stay home when sick and listen to the @CDCgov and local health authorities. Save the masks for health care workers. Let’s stay calm, listen to the experts, and follow the science.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 4, 2020
There’s no need to panic and buy a lifetime supply of hand-sanitiser and facemasks. We just need to go about our everyday life as normal, wash our hands with a little more vigour and follow official advice.
The Tourism industry and coronavirus
While we understand the need to take precautions, we don’t want to have any unnecessary anxiety when it comes to travelling. Tourism is vital to the economy and we’re not just talking about travel companies.
If tourism declines then it will have a knock-on effect on transport, restaurants, leisure and retail. Tourism is worth approximately 10% of the UK GDP with the economies of many countries (island nations in particular) relying heavily on holidaymakers.
This Coronavirus could infect the world’s economy, too and that can affect more people than the actual virus itself.
Staying #TravelPositive at MSG
There are a lot of question marks surrounding travel right now but there’s still plenty to shout about at MSG Tours with some vibrant globetrotting news.
Eight schools have returned from all over the globe from their tours over half-term with nothing but praise for our team. We had study trips in New York and Japan, ski trips in Italy and Georgia, and sports tours to France, Spain and South Africa.
And, 87% of our school trips for 2021 are already booked up so we are all very optimistic here.
Keep calm and travel
It has been a busy few weeks at MSG Tours and we are #TravelPositive, despite the furore surrounding Coronavirus.
- Enquiries for school travel with MSG in 2021 are at all all-time high, fuelled by our marketing stats downloaded today for the past two weeks.
- 95% of tours affected by COVID-19 related activity have re-booked with us for later dates this year.
- Our tour to New Zealand in July for Wales Summer Tour vs the All Blacks is now officially SOLD OUT.
- A Dubai 7’s 2020 package has been launched with a significant level of appreciation from our regulars.
- The MSG team have returned from their inspection visit to South Africa with limited availability remaining on our Lions Tour in 2021.
Our steps for dealing with Coronavirus
The experts at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) only advise against travel for China, two cities in South Korea and 11 small towns in Northern Italy because of COVID-19*. So, for now, we have rested these areas until they make a full recovery (and we’ll be sure to support them when the green flags are raised).
We are fully-assured members of The School Travel Forum and ABTA, and we’re ATOL protected to provide every client with financial, legal, operational and pastoral protection.
What are we going to do? We’re going to listen to Obama. We’ll wash our hands regularly, sneeze into our elbows, replace handshakes with fist bumps and keep on travelling.
#TravelPositive #KeepTravelling #WhatVirus?
*information correct, as of 06.03.2020