Business ProfileforSuper Holiday Tours

In June 2022 the **** ***** from TN traveled with Super Holiday Tours to NYC to sing at Carnegie Hall. The group travel planner was Mr. Mark *****.

The trip departure out of ***************** Intl. Airport scheduled early on the morning of June 22nd did not happen, as ***************** canceled the intended flight and almost two days later the group ended up in NYC due to help from an ***************** worker who felt sorry for our students sleeping on the floor in the airport. Mrs. ***** was thankful that 48 of her 59 total group had enhanced insurance after fundraising approximately $130,000 from their tiny community, whose individuals and businesses joined together to help in the effort to get the kids to Carnegie Hall.

As the trip progressed, some experiences that were included in the original itinerary were crammed into the remaining days, and the group ended up having to leave for home at their originally-scheduled departure time, with no adjustments to the itinerary or efforts to recoup the nearly two days of missed time in NYC. On several occasions, Mark ***** mentioned that the group automatically qualified for the 'trip delay' factor that would ensure the group would be getting some money back, as most of the participants had purchased the Enhanced Trip Insurance. (48 of the 59 had enhanced trip insurance.)

The last comments that Mr. ***** communicated to Mrs. ***** was that he was in direct contact with ********* and that they were waiting to see what ***************** was going to offer the group before they did anything to offer any compensation. The trip concluded almost five months ago and there has been no word from ********* or SHT employee Mark ***** concerning the matter. We are imploring SHT Management/Supervisors to make efforts to resolve this issue and provide director Amanda ***** with an update concerning financial compensation / relief due to the material losses involved in this trip.

We understand that any delays or complications experienced by any of our groups can be unsettling and frustrating and in the case of Cocke County those delays cascaded into the perfect storm. The night before Cocke County was to depart, we received news from American Airlines that their flights were to be cancelled. Immediately our team was on the phone from Wednesday evening until the early hours of Thursday, trying to resolve the flight situation. For the record, that day over 1440 flights were cancelled, 412 belonged to American Airlines. The airlines made multiple changes to the group's flights, cancelling and rebooking several times. With each change, we contacted all our partners and informed them that the group would not be arriving as scheduled, even rebooking bus transportation Originally the group was to arrive mid-morning at New York's Laguardia airport on Thursday 6/22 but with all the cancellations they were split by American and had to fly into 2 separate airports (JFK and LGA) the morning of Thursday June 23rd. We empathize with Mrs Short and what the students endured. We did what we could on our end to assist, which meant getting hotel rooms for travelers stranded in one airport, breakfast for the rest stranded in the other airport and successfully reaching out to a local ABC affiliate which generated sympathy for their situation in AA's backyard. Eventually the group arrived in New York and through the assistance of our partners were able to get them back on schedule while working in their missed experiences (one dinner and visit to One World Observatory) back into the schedule and with the agreement of Mrs. Short. Ms. Short was very vocal about wanting to extend the group's trip an additional day or two and expected the airline to pay for it. I explained the difference between group and individual travel and that due to weather related delays the airlines was under no obligation to provide an extra night of hotel or meals. I did pass her demands on to the airlines but expected to hear nothing until after the crisis was over. Once the group returned home, myself, Mrs Short and Mrs. Williams held a group call with American Airlines who apologized for the inconvenience and said that they would be in direct contact with Mrs. Short about any future compensation. We were also told by AA that they would refund us for the group's hotel and meals but as of today we have received nothing. Addressing the follow up with the travel insurer TripMate. Claim forms were not sent out since we were waiting on American to respond with a dollar amount. In addition, since the group's hotel was part of a Carnegie performance package, purchased separately from another company, we did not have access to hotel invoices. After several attempts, the production company has declined to provide an itemized list to us of all the elements, citing confidentiality clauses with their vendors. After discussing the situation with TripMate, the company has agreed to move forward with sending out claim forms to all the eligible travelers, hopefully bringing this issue to a satisfactory conclusion.