When the operator is the problem, who do you call
Every supplier publishes response times. Far fewer publish what happens when the person who should be fixing something is the person who caused it. That is the part of this page worth reading.
Response commitments
| Situation | Commitment | Measured how |
|---|---|---|
| New enquiry | 8 working hours | From receipt to a substantive reply, not an acknowledgement |
| Detailed quote | 3 working days | From brief confirmed to full costing |
| Amendment before D-14 | 1 working day | From request to confirmation or a reasoned no |
| Live programme, on site | 30 minutes | Coordinator, any hour, group on the ground |
| Live programme, escalated | 60 minutes | Duty manager above the coordinator |
| Post-event report | 3 working days | From programme end |
| Invoice query | 2 working days | From query to itemised answer |
A reply saying we have received your message does not stop the clock. The eight hours are to a substantive answer — feasible, not feasible, or here is what we need to decide.
The escalation ladder
- On-site coordinator. Present with the group. Handles everything operational. Reachable on a number in the programme document.
- Duty manager, MICEVIET. Not the DMC. Ours. Reachable 24 hours while any group is on the ground. This is the level most partners never need and the reason they stay.
- Destination lead. Holds the commercial relationship with the DMC and can instruct them. Where a DMC is refusing or failing to act, this is the level that resolves it.
- Managing director. For anything commercial, contractual or unresolved after the above. Named in your trade agreement, not a generic address.
Levels two and three are the whole argument for a contracting layer. If you contract a DMC directly and that DMC is the problem, your escalation path is the DMC. Here, the person you escalate to holds a contract the operator does not want to lose.
When we get it wrong
Service failures happen in ground operations. What varies between suppliers is whether the failure is acknowledged in writing and whether anything follows.
- Every deviation is written into the post-event report, including ones your client did not notice. Partners occasionally find this uncomfortable; it is deliberate, because the alternative is a report you cannot trust.
- Material failure attributable to us is credited, calculated on the affected component at net, and settled against the final invoice rather than as a separate process.
- We do not credit for weather, for supplier acts outside our contracted chain, or for changes your client made on site. The contingency covers the first; the report documents the rest.
- Repeated failure by a DMC triggers a contract review. The exclusive agreement is the leverage, and we use it. Partners are told when an operator has been replaced in a destination they use.
Raise it while the group is on the ground, not in the post-event debrief. Almost everything is fixable on day two and nothing is fixable three weeks later. And put it in writing to the duty manager, not only verbally to the coordinator — a verbal note to someone running a programme at 22:00 has a poor survival rate.
Questions partners ask most
Is the duty line really staffed overnight?
While a group is on the ground, yes. Outside programme dates it reverts to business hours and the number in your agreement forwards accordingly. We would rather state the limit than imply a 24/7 desk that does not exist.
Can we contact the DMC directly during a programme?
You can, and for routine operational matters it is faster. For anything that has become a problem, come to the duty manager instead — the DMC has an interest in resolving it quietly and we have an interest in you knowing about it.
Do you provide a written incident report?
For anything involving injury, illness, a security matter or a material service failure, yes, within 24 hours, in a format suitable for forwarding to a corporate client's risk function.
What if we disagree with the post-event account?
Raise it within two working days and we produce the supplier invoices behind the disputed line. Amendments are passed through at cost, so the underlying document settles most disputes immediately.
Where to go next
Four fields and you can send
Send the outline and we will come back within eight working hours with feasibility — whether the dates hold at that headcount and what constrains them — and a detailed net quote within three working days.