Tuesday, 24 March 2020

South Africa: Coronavirus COVID-19 chronicles: Sun Destinations Camp Closures

Sun Destinations South Africa Camp Closures

Coronavirus COVID-19 chronicles

Hi,

Following the announcement of a lock down in South Africa starting this Thursday and in line with public health advice, our South African camps have taken the decision to temporarily close with immediate effect. All the camps intend to reopen on 1 May 2020 provided that it is safe to do so. Our reservations team will be in touch with bookings travelling in March and April 2020.

We would really encourage you to push for postponements. You can postpone without having new dates and please note our updated terms further below. Postponing will assist in alleviating pressures on all of us as we try to preserve every reservation we have. The camps, yours and ours, number one priority is to protect staff and livelihoods and postponing as opposed to cancelling helps us all.

UPDATED TERMS and CONDITIONS

With the rapidly escalating travel bans we have revised our policies as follows:

Bookings travelling within the next 60 days.

We would encourage all guests booked to travel within 60 days and unable to travel due to travel bans to consider postponing their booking to a later date.
  
° We would encourage guests to postpone their booking to travel on or before 01 May 2021 at no extra cost.
° Should guests rebook to travel on or before 01 May 2021 and wish to make further changes to travel dates, this would be accommodated subject to availability.
° Should guests not wish to travel on or before 01 May 2021, we will extend postponement to 31 December 2021, subject to a 2021 rates.
° Should clients wish to cancel for travel within the next 60 days then standard cancellation policies will apply.

Bookings travelling more than 60 days out

Considering how quickly things are changing on a daily basis as regards COVID-19, we would encourage guests to delay any decisions to cancel or postpone these bookings at this stage. 

For bookings travelling more than 60 day out, our standard terms and conditions still apply. HOWEVER we are always willing to be flexible should you have any issues in applying the standard terms and conditions to guests bookings. We are happy to work on a case by case basis. Just as the pandemic is not the guests fault, neither it is the camps, or Sun Destinations or our valued agents and some reasonability needs to applied to all cancelled bookings.

REFUNDS

Please may I ask that there is some patience shown as regards refunds. Just as I am sure you all inundated with cancellations and refunds, there are only so many emails one can get through in a day. Ensuring that all refunds are processed correctly will take some time.

Here is hoping that by the 16th April 2020 we will all have a clearer idea of where this nightmare is going, and I just want to wish everyone the best. Our industry is the not only one affected and I hope that we can all somehow emerge on the other side safe and sound and livelihoods intact.

Thank you for supporting the camps, it is very much appreciated, and the camps look forward to welcoming guests again in the future.

Regards
Brett Thomson
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