Excite Holidays has today suspended operations on their trade site with the online wholesaler citing “final stages of commercial discussions” as the main reason.
The announcement below went up today on Excite Holidays trade portal accessible for logged-in agents only.
“Excite Holidays is currently in the final stages of commercial discussions and as such we have suspended the operation of our platform until the discussions are completed.
Should you require any assistance regarding a booking, please email us on help@exciteholidays.com“
No further details were released about who the commercial discussions are with nor any timeline was given.
The pressure on 18-year old online wholesaler Excite Holidays has continued to build this week, off the back of an increasing amount of agents experiencing pre-paid bookings for their clients not being honoured.
Agent complaints about Excite Holidays began to surface over the Christmas period with agents reporting pre-paid bookings cancelled without their knowledge and agents’ clients arriving at destinations to find no transfers or hotel reservations paid for, or worse, cancelled altogether.
In cases where there was still availability at hotels, many agent’ clients were forced to pay the (now higher) room rate balance for their hotel at check-in.
Numerous frustrated agents have also contacted us to report that they had been on hold with Excite for up to five hours without any response. Many also said they were cut off after waiting for lengthy periods.
One agent said he was currently “$50k out of pocket” while another cited a litany of cancelled bookings in Europe and was advised by Excite to pay for the booking and then lodge a claim with the company.
Excite Holidays had previously posted an update on their Facebook page on 30 December citing ‘system issues’ saying at the time they were working to resolve the issue.
Despite announcing that they would be fully staffed over the busy Christmas and new year period, many agents told us that they received bounce backs and anserphone messages from their BDM’s, who told them they would not return to work until the 13th of January.
Since running our initial story on Monday about Excite Holidays we have been flooded with emails from concerned agents who they say “have been left in the lurch with their clients” and who are now “blaming them” as a consequence.
Read on for some of the comments from our Facebook post below.
Excite Holidays began in 2002, expanding from a single office in Sydney, to include offices in New Zealand, the United States of America, Thailand, Singapore, Greece and the United Kingdom.
Have you been affected? Email us confidentially at editor@karryon.com.au