Covid-Crisis? Keep talking and use vouchers

(Paolo Barilari – Felca President)

Communication is indeed the keyword during these days.

I have never “met” my fellow colleagues of Felca and our partners from the Gaela schools so often as in the last weeks.

Covid-19 emergency required an intensive schedule of meetings, in order to try to deal with an unexpected and drastic change in all over the world, and in the world of Language travel as well.

Our sector is like a big table who stands on three solid legs: the students, the schools and the agents, all necessary to keep the sector going.

Students are vital, of course. They go to the schools to improve their skills necessary to succeed in a competitive world. Agents are the reliable guides who help students to make the right choice.

This whole system runs the risk to collapse because of the pandemic disease, the impossibility to travel, the lack of confidence in meeting new people that will be difficult to overcome in the next months.

In the meantime, partnership between schools and agent might be broken by the lack of liquidity and the request for refunds and reimbursements.

That is why, among Felca members (16 Agents’ national associations) the idea of freezing all our credit and debts into a sort of virtual money, the vouchers, seemed a practical and quick idea to help the industry to cope with the shock.

Click here to access FELCA proposal on vouchers system

Many schools and agents are already using the vouchers to bridge the gap that divides us from the day of the so longed re-opening of our businesses.

Vouchers are not a 100% perfect system, some aspects must be discussed and fine-tuned, but they can be the solution – they are already in fact – in many cases.

How would the vouchers work?

Click on this link to read a detailed description of it. Hopefully we will go back to our business very soon. Working is our passion as it was before and thanks to hard work our business will become even better if it is possible.