At the time, the three independent agents were all preparing to open their doors to customers on 15 June.

Arundel Travel director Helen Parry, Lisa Lightly, East of England Co-op Travel’s Tiptree branch manager, and TravelTime World director Jackie Steadman all said they were raring to get back to their shops.

Having moved from retail premises to an office before lockdown, Steadman had traded as usual throughout, but was looking forward to launching an outdoor appointment system.

Parry said she was “really excited”. “I’ve been working from home for the past eight to nine weeks.

We are on the high street and I feel like if other shops around us were opening and we weren’t, it doesn’t give that confident message.

“I wanted that confidence to grow with the customer that travel is getting back on its feet.”

Lightly added: “I think [reopening] is going to restore a lot of confidence. Customers like human face-to-face interaction and I think that’s really going to help build the business again.”

Steadman said there were potential issues with reopening for some medium-sized firms. “If you’ve got five, six, seven, 10 shops, then I’m not sure all of those are going to be open just because of the cost of staffing.”

Lightly added: “We have 14 branches. We are good to go. From what I’m hearing it’s a bit of a mix.”

Parry said some staff had childcare issues and could not return. All said their local authority had given practical support.

“We’ve followed the government’s 37-page document making sure it’s safe for the teams and customers, and we’ve done the risk assessment,” said Parry.

“It makes the team confident that everything’s in place and we’re ready for them to come back.

"We’ve had packs given to us by the local council, which have been brilliant; it’s got masks, tape, floor stickers and then we’ve also bought the Perspex protection screens for the desks plus thousands of wipes.

“We’re happy, staff are happy; hopefully the customers will be as well. We don’t want to be the shop you can’t shop in.”

Steadman said she was looking at offering branded hand sanitiser and was operating an appointment-only system. “We don’t envisage having more than two people in at any one time. We have a courtyard at the front and back, so we’re offering outdoor appointments and I’ve been doing garden appointments as well.

“We’re not going to be doing tea and coffee for clients, and our water cooler has a cover on it. I’ve taken up crochet, so I’ve been crocheting little masks for people as presents. It takes me half an hour, so when I know someone is coming in, I make a little mask for them.”

’We’ve got through it’

Lightly said some of East of England Co-op’s 14 shops were inside food stores, so it was working with them. “We have a ‘one person in, locked door’ appointment service. We’ll have a safe desk for customers signing paper work and use disposable pens.”

“When people come in, they are expecting to see these things in place, so I don’t think it’s going to seem too alien as such. People are expecting to see people in masks; they are expecting to see these screens up. I think they’re going to welcome it.”

Parry summed up the upbeat mood by saying appointments for the first two days of trading were “already full”. “At the beginning, everyone was doom and gloom about the travel industry [when] actually, we’ve got through it, we’re reopening our doors.”

For other TTG Business Support Live panels and to watch this episode in full, visit flymy.co.uk/tv.