Have not spoken to the bloke for a few weeks, but sent a message and he suggested they were mainly 'rebooking' or 'cancelling' clients' fares.
Hard to think of many travel agents who wouldn't have been extremely badly hit. In smaller firms there must be a lot of stand downs/ redundancies if they're not sole traders. They just won't have the cashflow to keep paying staff I'd suspect.
I don't want to contact the chap as it's sort of embarrassing if you know what I mean.
All the publicity is about Flight Centre and to some extent Helloworld but what about online Webjet, bricks and mortar STA Travel and those (largely women) who are sort of franchisees and tend to book upper end overseas holidays? I think one group is called Travel Counsellors.
One of the worst features of "it" must be that there's no certainty about an 'end date', so few of us may have the confidence to book ahead. I don't know anyone in my circle who's game enough to book an overseas leisure trip yet.
Some AFFers are braver but that to me is a minority view not reflective of the community.