Lyn McNaught Travel celebrates 40 years of holiday bookings and a little crisis management

By Murray Silby

Apr 27, 2023

**Helloworld:** Lyn McNaught is still answering the calls of travellers after 40 years in her own business and 53 years working in the industry. Photo by Murray Silby

There’s hardly a major crisis that Lyn McNaught and her business, Lyn McNaught Travel, have not felt over the past four decades, but whether it be SARS, bird flu, swine flu, the Global Financial Crisis, COVID-19 or the introduction of the internet and self-booking, she’s ridden the wave and landed on the sun-kissed beach on the other side.

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Despite the challenges, or maybe because of them, Ms McNaught has weathered them all and kept answering the phones.

“It’s a passion,’’ she said.

“I think it’s one of those things that when you’re in this industry, you’ll either love it or hate it and if you hate it, you don’t stay and if you love it you do.

“It’s a great industry to be in.

“It’s had lots of moments of course, but it’s a very exciting industry to be in.”

Ms McNaught said it was her job to take the hassle and worry out of travel for her clients.

“That’s what we do, obviously. Yes,” she said.

“So if the airlines cancel your flights or they change them and you’ve got to sit on the phone and try and get hold of somebody. Let me say good luck.”

As we speak, her phone, which until now has been crackling out elevator music, leaps to life as a company call centre worker calls out “Hello, are you there?”, and like she has for so many over the years, Ms McNaught grabs the handset and sets about cancelling a booking for an ill customer.

It’s what she does, and has been doing for decades.

“When I started there were no computers so every single booking you had to ring up, or an airline or a tour company, we’re still ringing at times, but yes, there were no computers, no computers whatsoever,” she said.

She’s noticed that people are taking more holidays now than when she started out, and families are travelling with younger children, while cruising, despite the bad publicity cruise ships attracted during the pandemic, is increasingly popular.

And, for many people, it would seem the pandemic is well and truly over, if bookings are anything to go by.

“A lot of people last year still were a bit reluctant because of COVID, (they) weren’t sure,” she said.

“This year, everybody’s going and I mean everybody.

“It’s the busiest year in travel that I’ve ever known.

“Can’t get a seat, hardly, on an aircraft anytime soon. It’s full.”

Having difficulty getting people on a plane to go on holiday certainly makes a change from attempting to repatriate them home to escape a global pandemic, and Ms McNaught’s likely to be that voice at the end of the phone to help them out for some time yet.