Strikes have been a regular part of the European calendar of late. We have seen ATC walkouts in France, rail strikes in Germany, transit days in Italy, and more.
Most tour operators lose bookings every time one of these hits. This is because they take a reactive approach of responding to inbound messages instead of proactively communicating ahead of time.
By communicating three short messages ahead of time, you can recover bookings and even use the disruption to foster a stronger guest relationship.
One before the strike, one on the morning of the strike, and one a few days after it clears. The third message is the one most operators skip, and it is the one that quietly does the most work. Here is what each message does, what to say, and how to make sure it actually happens.
What you’re planning around in 2026
A quick lay of the land before the messages. Notice windows vary by country and union:
- French ATC strikes: usually five to seven days’ notice, sometimes more, sometimes less.
- German rail (EVG, ver.di): about a week’s notice on average.
- Italian transit (CGIL, USB, regional unions): as little as 48 hours’ notice, though the national strike calendar is published each quarter so the rough timing is rarely a complete surprise.
Even if your tours run in one city, your guests connect through everywhere else, so it is important to keep an eye on happenings across the continent.
A strike in Paris on Tuesday could quietly cancel half your Rome bookings on Wednesday because the guests on the connecting flight will not land in time.
A Berlin operator selling day trips to Potsdam now has to track Deutsche Bahn schedules, French ATC, and whatever is happening in Italy this week.
Treating each country’s strikes as separate news, instead of one rolling calendar, costs bookings every time.
The good news is that the proactive messaging strategy you can employ is the same across nations, languages, and experiences.
The 48-hour heads-up
When a strike is announced with two days’ notice or more, you have time to do the polite thing, which is also the smart thing: tell your guests before they have to ask. Pull every booking in the affected window, segment by tour, and send a single message that gives them a clear set of options:
“Hi [first name], a quick heads-up about your [tour name] booked for [date]. A [rail / transit / air traffic] strike is expected that day, which may affect how you get to us. The tour is still going ahead, but we want you to have options. You can keep your booking as it is, move to another date this month with no fee, or take a full refund. Just reply with the one that works and we’ll handle it from there.”
That short message does most of the work. “Still going ahead” reassures the confident travellers, who make up a surprising majority and do not need to change anything. The three options give the rest a clear path, so they don’t feel forced to invent their own solution or write a long email explaining their situation. Keeping the reply on one channel means you’re not chasing the same conversation across email, WhatsApp, and Instagram DMs at the same time.
If your booking system can pull a segmented list and fire off a saved template by email or SMS, this whole flow takes about ten minutes per affected tour. If it can’t, it takes an hour, which is why most operators skip the step and spend strike day answering questions one by one instead.
The strike-morning note
On the morning of the strike, between 7 and 9am local time, send a short message to everyone with a booking that day. Resist the urge to add maps, alternative routes, backup plans, or a long explanation of how the strike affects each train line. Your guests have read the news. What they need from you is reassurance that the tour is still happening and that you are paying attention.
“Good morning [first name]. The [transit type] strike is on as planned. Your [tour name] is going ahead at [time] from [meeting point]. We’re keeping an eye on things and will message you directly if anything changes. Safe journey, see you soon.”
That’s all. It confirms the tour is happening, which a surprising number of guests assume strikes automatically cancel. It repeats the meeting point so nobody has to dig back through their inbox five minutes before they need to leave. And it signals that you are awake, looking, and ready to update them if anything actually does change. Operators who send this message consistently say their strike-morning inbox drops by more than half, which means their team can actually help the guests who genuinely need it, instead of answering the same five questions over and over before the first tour even starts.
The follow-up email (the one most operators don’t send)
Two or three days after the strike clears, send one more message to every guest who was affected, whether they made it to the tour, rescheduled, or took a refund. Not a marketing email. A short, specific note that acknowledges what happened and offers something small for next time.
“Hi [first name], wanted to follow up on the [date] strike. We know it made things harder, and for some of you it changed your plans completely. Thank you for sticking with us, or for trusting us to process the refund cleanly if you couldn’t make it. If you’d like to give the [tour name] another go, we’d love to host you. Reply to this and we’ll book you in with priority placement, on us.”
Twenty minutes of work, maybe thirty. What it does is turn a refunded booking into a returning customer, and a stressed-out guest into someone who tells two friends you handled the mess like a pro. The refund itself is the transaction. The follow-up is the part that makes the guest remember you. Refund-only operators stay at zero. Operators who send the follow-up quietly build the kind of loyalty that survives a bad season.
Almost nobody sends this email, which is exactly why it works so well. Your guests are used to silence from operators once a refund clears. A short, warm note three days later puts you in a category of one.
How to run the playbook
Three messages sound straightforward, until the strike is tomorrow and your customer service person is on holiday. The playbook only works if it lives in your system rather than in one person’s head. To run it consistently, you need to be able to:
- Pull every affected booking in under a minute.
- Send a saved template to that list without rewriting it.
- Process refunds without clicking through fifteen screens for each one.
- Have the follow-up email fire on its own three days after the strike clears.
Regiondo handles all four in one place, with the same data behind each step. The 48-hour list comes out of the CRM, the messages send from saved templates in the right language for each guest, the refunds flow through the booking record without leaving the platform, and the follow-up is just another scheduled email tied to the disruption date. The playbook stops depending on Sofia in customer service remembering it, and starts running the same way every time, whether the strike falls on a Tuesday in March or in the middle of August when half your team is at the beach.
That is what separates the operators who recover bookings from the ones who lose them.
FAQ: How should a tour operator communicate with customers before a transport strike?
ANS: Send one message 48 hours before the strike, to every affected guest, with three options: keep the booking, reschedule with no fee, or take a full refund. Confirm the tour is going ahead, list the options plainly, and ask for a reply on one channel. You’ll protect more bookings than you lose, and reduce the inbound message load on strike day.
FAQ: Should I offer refunds or reschedules during a travel strike?
ANS: Both, but lead with the reschedule. Most guests will move dates if you offer first, especially when “no fee” is in the message. Always include a full refund as the third option for guests who can’t reschedule. Refusing refunds during a known strike costs more in bad reviews than the refunded revenue is worth.
FAQ: What should an operator’s post-strike recovery email say?
ANS: Send it two or three days after the strike clears. Acknowledge what happened, thank the guest for their patience or for accepting the refund, and offer a small gesture for next time: priority rebooking, an upgrade, or a personal note. Keep it under 100 words. The point is to be remembered as the operator who handled the mess like a pro.
FAQ: How far in advance are travel strikes announced in Europe?
ANS: It depends on the country. French ATC and German rail (EVG, ver.di) usually give five to seven days’ notice. Italian transit days can land with 48 hours’ warning, though the national strike calendar published each quarter gives a rough heat map. If you sell across Europe, watch all of them, because your guests connect through everywhere.
FAQ: Can a customer claim a refund if they can’t reach my tour because of a strike they knew about in advance?
ANS: It depends on your terms and when they booked. If the strike was announced after the booking, most operators offer a full refund because the disruption isn’t the guest’s fault. If they booked after the strike was announced, a reschedule is usually fair. Tours sold as part of a package fall under the EU Package Travel Directive, which has stricter rules, so check the package status before refusing a refund.
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