ALG Vacations has extended its customer service hours and made cancellation policies more flexible, as the vacation packager has been flooded with inquiries about violence in Mexico's state of Jalisco, including in Puerto Vallarta.
Puerto Vallarta has been the epicenter of disruption since the killing of prominent cartel boss El Mencho on Feb. 22. Flights were disrupted and tourists were urged to shelter in place.
On Tuesday, Jalisco's government said "order and stability have been restored" to the state's main tourist areas, including Puerto Vallarta and the Guadalajara metro area. The shelter-in-place directive was lifted.
ALG Vacations hosted a webinar Tuesday to answer questions and provide support to travel advisors whose clients are in-destination or have trips booked.
The issues in Mexico, along with airline delays from the snowstorm on Sunday and Monday on the U.S. East Coast, have led to long wait times for advisors seeking information from the call center, during a winter season that is already busy.
The vacation packager expanded daily hours for its customer call center to 8 a.m. through 11 p.m. Eastern time until Saturday, Feb. 28. About 500 people are working the phones to answer travel advisors' questions.
"This is all hands on deck," said ALG Vacations global head of trade Jacki Marks.
Though ALG customers are canceling their trips to Puerto Vallarta and other parts of Mexico, Marks said the company has seen "a tremendous amount" of rebookings to other destinations. On Monday alone, bookings to Jamaica were up more than 50%, she said. The Dominican Republic and other Caribbean destinations were seeing strong rebookings, too.
ALG Vacations was fielding inquiries about other parts of Mexico. Ben Recob, the company's director of education, said Quintana Roo, a state that includes Cancun and the Riviera Maya, was not experiencing disruption. Indeed, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico on Monday said things had returned to normal in Quintana Roo, lifting a shelter-in-place directive.
The company is issuing a full refund for customers who had flights to Puerto Vallarta on Feb. 22 through 24. Beginning Feb. 25, ALG Vacations will give cash back or travel credit to customers with trip protection who cancel their trips.
"We want you to feel confident about the product," Recob said. "We want to put your clients at ease."