service-recovery-and-disruption

name	service-recovery-and-disruption
description	Run travel disruption and service recovery: triage the failure, rebook the traveler fast, escalate to supplier/insurance, decide goodwill deliberately, and document every change. A well-run recovery protects the traveler and earns the repeat booking. Supplier remedies and insurance terms are verify-at-use.

Service Recovery & Disruption

When travel breaks — a cancelled flight (IROPS), an overbooked hotel, a supplier default — the recovery is a sales activity, not just damage control. The traveler remembers who answered.

The loop

1. Triage the disruption. Identify the failure, who owns it (supplier vs traveler-caused vs force-majeure), and the traveler's immediate need — traverse the disruption / service-recovery tree in ../../knowledge/travel-agency-decision-trees.md.
2. Rebook fast. Move the traveler to a working option before litigating whose fault it is. Speed protects the trip; the reconciliation comes after.
3. Escalate to the right party. Supplier remedy / rebooking desk, travel insurance claim, or credit-card protection — route to whoever actually owes the remedy ([verify-at-use] against the policy/supplier terms).
4. Decide goodwill deliberately. When no one strictly owes a remedy, decide whether an agency goodwill gesture is worth the retained relationship — a judgment call the operations-lead frames (fee/margin context).
5. Document the change. Every rebooking, credit, and communication goes in the itinerary change log — see ../itinerary-design-and-quoting/SKILL.md. Undocumented recovery is an E&O gap.

Metrics

Metric	Reads	Note
Time-to-rebook	disruption → traveler re-accommodated	The traveler-experience metric
Recovery-to-repeat rate	disrupted travelers who rebook	Recovery's real ROI
Insurance/supplier recovery	remedy dollars recovered	Don't eat costs someone else owes
Change-log completeness	% of changes documented	The E&O shield

Anti-patterns

• Litigating fault before rebooking the stranded traveler.
• Eating a cost the supplier or insurer actually owes.
• A verbal-only recovery with no change record.

See also

• ../itinerary-design-and-quoting/SKILL.md, ../group-vs-fit-trip-operations/SKILL.md.
• Best practice: ../../best-practices/service-recovery-is-the-repeat-booking.md.