WTF – The airline lost my client!

          Let’s file this one into the “smack your head in amazement of their stupidity” file.   And I stress, I am not making this up.  If I was making it up it would involve a rare species of bird and a police chase.  This, on the other hand, is just stupid.

        An airline (who shall remain nameless to avoid a lawsuit) actually managed to loose one of my clients. 

        Yep, as in “no we have no idea where he currently is, but we know he’s on a plane going… somewhere”.   That’s actually pretty close to the exact words the agent said to me.   At this point I’m staring at my phone in complete disbelief.  You’re a freaking airline, moving thousands of people every day and with an incredibly sophisticated computer system, but yet you have no idea what plane you put my client on?  You have got to be kidding me.

          The situation was this: my client showed up at the airport in Cordoba, Argentina, only to be notified that his flight had been rescheduled and he’d miss all his connections, so he been rerouted.  Instead of the planned route Cordoba to Santiago to Mexico City to Vancouver, he was now going Cordoba to Santiago to Los Angeles to Houston to Vancouver.  Nice, eh?  Ooh, surprise, you’re no longer even touching down in an entire country (where he had been supposed to spend the night and had a hotel reservation) and we’re sending you all over the Americas just for the hell of it.  But because all these changes were made right at the check-in counter at the airport, his tickets were issued and he was on a plane even before the airline’s computer systems had time to catch up with the changes. 

         Luckily he had called his wife, who had called me, to notify her of his new schedule, so we (the important people) knew where he was at least supposed to be, even if the airline didn’t.  I can’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like had his poor wife not known where he was and I wouldn’t have been able to give her any answers.  I’ve had upset clients before, but she would have taken the gold medal for having the best reason to freak out.  But alas, all was calm.  Just dumbfounded.

       On the upside, he arrived right on time and everything turned out great, but I just can’t help but wonder that if the airline could spend hours not knowing where a passenger is, what do they do to luggage?  “Oh, I’m sorry, your bag had an emergency rerouting to…somewhere.  You may get it back, but we really have no idea at this point”.   

              And get this: regular passengers out of Cordoba told my client that this wasn’t unusual.  It’s like airplane roulette, you have a 50% chance of landing close to where you want, but nothing is guaranteed!  Needless to say, next passenger I have going anywhere close to Cordoba, I’m monitoring their progress every step of the way so that even if the airline looses them, I don’t!

Tags: argentina, BlogSherpa, crazy, flight, Mexico, south america, travel agent, weird

The Importance of Travel Agents

           Welcome to the internet age.  You can now buy a condo, meet your future spouse, learn how to hotwire a car, blog incessantly about your travels, and probably save the world all while still in your pajamas and happy bunny toe socks.  You can also book your next vacation all by yourself.  But just because you can, should you?  Despite having the universe at your fingertips, there is still reason to go to your local Travel Agent and get them to do the work for you. 

         I’m not just saying this because I am one (okay, that’s a teensy part of it), but Travel Agents are still important assets.  We really do have a wealth of information that you’re never going to find online – we talk about popular destinations on a daily basis and/or have probably been there (most tourism offices go to great lengths to get agents to visit so they can better sell their destination).  Even if we haven’t visited ourselves, we  probably know someone (a coworker/past client) who has been recently and can feed off their feedback.  Plus, we sit at computers for a reason, as we have access to a slew of specialized computer programs that can answer most inquiries with just a few clicks or keystrokes.   Think of it this way: one day you want to go to Australia, so you hop online and book a return ticket for Sydney leaving next week.  Seems perfect, right?  But if you didn’t know you needed a Visa to enter Australia (based on Canadian citizenship), the second you got to the immigration counter at Syndey International you’d be denied entry and sent home on the next flight, not getting any of your money refunded.

             Agents have your back.  More than almost anything, that’s the biggest service we provide.   We’re here to support you in booking and planning your dream vacation, but also to help you clean up the mess if something goes wrong.  We have lots of industry contacts who we’ve built up relationships with over the years, and if there’s a glitch in your trip, we can go straight to the source and get it sorted out as smoothly as possible. It’s a symbiotic relationship, we support their product, they do their best to help us (and, consequently, you) out in a crisis.  Plus, my company, at least, has more than 400 agencies across Canada, so they don’t want to make us mad.  We control a nice amount of the selling power across the country, so we wield a little more pursuasive power as the travel companies don’t want to loose our business.  I’ve had cases where suppliers will go above and beyond to get a matter sorted out to the client’s satisfaction solely because I was calling on behalf of my company.  Online, you get none of this.  The classic case is a woman who tried to book herself to London, England and accidentally booked her ticket to London, Ontario (the prices were probably pretty similar!).  She was screwed, and there was no one to blame but her own ignorance.  No online booking site is going to refund any money just because she didn’t read the fine print.  If she had booked with an agent, on the other hand, she would have been going to England correctly in the first place

            Then there’s price.  Travel agencies understand as well as anyone that in these tough economic times price is the bottom line, and that is why we have a vast network of suppliers – suppliers who do not sell to the public – that offer wholesale “bulk” prices and special contract prices just to us.  These are usually better than or at least comparable to anything that could be found online, and without an agent you would have missed out.

             Yes, we charge service fees.  All agencies do it, and if they say they don’t, that’s because they’ve hidden it in the bill and called it a “tax”.   We have to.  No business could stay afloat if all they did was give out information all day and not get paid for it.  And yes, this adds to the price of your vacation.  Think about it, you’re paying for service, booking security and peace of mind.  There is a difference between price and value, and what we offer is definitely valuable.  When you get to Europe and realize you’d accidentally booked yourself into a hotel with one shared bathroom for all the rooms, or come home from the worst all-inclusive vacation ever and want to file a complaint about it, instead of just sitting and fuming, you could contact us and we could help you get it all sorted out while you sit and fume.

              What it all boils down to is this:  I love my job.  I love creating people’s dreams on a daily basis and sharing all I know with my clients.  It’s new and exciting every day, as I don’t know what adventures the day holds.  Don’t get me wrong, dealing with distraught clients, stupid questions and annoying airlines isn’t always sunshine and roses, but at the end of the day there’s nothing better then hearing from an excited passenger that I had just sent them on the best vacation they’d ever had.  So call your local travel agent and let them put their expertise to work on the best trip you’ve ever had

Tags: London, price, service, travel agent, value

I wrote a book! What a novel idea.

Travel agent by day, novelist by night.  For years my routine regularly involves going to work just as Holly, but when I get home I put on my cape and morph into my alter-ego Rocket Girl (or Travel Junkie, or Grammatically Correct Girl, whatever, I haven’t come up with a good Super Hero name yet) and curl up with my laptop and hammer away.  It’s not going to save the world (unless, of course there’s a massive flood and the world needs to use it as a flotation device), but my efforts have finally bore fruit and my novel is finally complete.   You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to say that.  I’ve finally written something that passes my anal-retentive “is this good enough to show other people?” test!  Insert happy dance here.

It’s an action/mystery work of fiction, but, naturally, there’s a giant amount of travel thrown in.  This is me, here.   Here’s the gist (I’m not going to spoil it now!): five years ago a group of people witnessed a brutal murder in a Seattle bar, and the killer was never captured.  In the interim, the witnesses have dispersed all over the globe, either trying to escape bad memories or through job commitments.  When suddenly someone begins unexpectedly hunting down and killing the witnesses, two survivors take it upon themselves to warn the others, but when standard phone calls/e-mails fail, they take to the skies.  Thus begins an international cat-and-mouse game that spans the planet from Seattle to Bangkok, Sydney to London, one where motivation, trust and the truth are put to the ultimate test and a missed connection could leave them permanently delayed.

Ooh, that actually sounds pretty good.  I’ll have to save that.

Anyhow, I’m so crazy-happy-over the moon that it’s finally done, but now I’m entering a whole new phase of the writing process.  The first hurdle is, of course, sucking up that fear that your closest friends and family (or as I like to call them, the “focus group”) are going to read the first draft and hate it (not that they’d actually say that, I do love them for a reason, but still…).  Then there’s the next step of “how the hell am I supposed to get this published?”  This is the new adventure, the research, the nerve-wracking submitting my manuscript for its blind dates in hoping we’ll find the perfect publisher and soon end up on Chapters shelves everywhere.  I’ve had articles published before, but this is a whole different animal, not to mention a hell of a lot more postage to mail.  You know that super-excited-but-scared-to-the-point-of-nearly-loosing-bladder-control feeling?  I’m there.

I don’t know how this is going to progress, but I can’t wait!  Of course, I’ll blog about it every step of the way.

Woo hoo!  My book is done!

Tags: Bangkok, Book, fiction, London, published, Seattle, Sydney, travel agent, USA, writer

Have you been there?

Tons of times.  I practically forward my mail there.

Yes, but it’s been a while, so some of the attractions weren’t there for me to visit.

Once, on a business trip, but I want to go back and see what I missed.

Not me personally, but one of my coworkers has, and she loved it.

No.

            As an agent, responding to ”have you been there?” is daily challenge -on a good day we can hear it as much as Hilary Swank hears “who are you wearing?” on the red carpet.   If you’re not prepared to field this one, you’re in the wrong business.  The catch is that, for the most part, the people who ask are looking into traveling to the most odd, remote and “how do you pronounce that exactly?” places on the globe.

          It always makes me want to laugh (I know, not the most professional thing to do, but really?  Do these people think about it before they ask?) when someone comes in asking for flights to Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, and, after getting the air and hotel options they requested, they hit me with “have you been there?”   No.  But I did see an episode of The Amazing Race that went there, and it looked cold.  Being an agent, personal/business travel is a huge part of my job, so I can experience as many destinations as possible, but I’m not that old (er, ”seasoned”) yet.  I just haven’t had the time to go everywhere, but I’m working on it.  My coworker Shirley, who’s been in the industry forever, really has been practically everywhere, but that’s a whole ’nother story.  

        From Vancouver, places like London, Honolulu,  Las Vegas, Cancun and even Hong Kong are all pretty logical “yep, I’ve been there” places.  We have great air connections and send hundreds of people a year.   When you come to my desk, I have a “Malaysia” business card holder, framed photo of a Cathay Pacific plane landing at the old Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, and my filing cabinet covered with postcards.  Ask away.  I promise that I have been to most of these places, all but the ones in the postcards sent to me from satisfied clients, and those ones I have heard some really great things about. 

        Honestly, I think it’s the deeper meaning behind this question that interests me.  You’re not asking me if I’ve been to Suriname or wherever because you want to know how I spend my free time, you’re asking me because you have no idea what to do there.   There was something so enchanting about this destination that compelled you to forgo today’s Days of Our Lives and come down to the agency, but yet you don’t know how you’re going to fill your days once there.  Was it just a cool sounding name, so you figured you’d drop that extra three grand you had kicking around on your coffee table and go there?  Take a moment and consider what do you like to do on vacation?  If you’re a beach bunny, Orlando is going to leave you painfully high and dry (I know Florida is a thin state, but it’s not that thin); or if you have the attention span of a gerbil (like me), an all-inclusive resort designed for nothing but peace and relaxation is going to have you pacing around like a caged lion. 

               What you really need to do is read my blog on stage 1 of the 3 stages of travel (the Anticipation).  But seriously, you need to start the research.  I will gladly sell you your trip to Leichtenstein, and I’ll tell you every shred of info I know about it, regardless of whether I’ve been there or not, but to really make your trip yours, you need to plan your days around what you enjoy.  No matter how cool the place sounds, if it doesn’t offer a chance to broaden your mind/partake in your favorite hobbies/drink yourself stupid/whatever you want to do, it’s not going to be a truly satisfying vacation.  Buy a guidebook.  Google it.  Take this trip and make it your own.  And when you come back, I’ll ask you “Have you been there?” and you’ll have a great answer.

Tags: experience, odd, travel agent, Ulaanbaatar

Wedding Bonanza

            Weddings and travel go hand in hand.  Be it destination weddings where we arrange everything from the resort to the decorations, building dream honeymoons, groups where we transport all the guests/photographer/bridal party for a special rate (assuming there are enough people to qualify) , or just flying individuals from point A to point B so they can attend someone’s nuptials, weddings are huge in the industry.  Normally I tackle a few a year in some capacity, but for the last few weeks I’ve been all weddings all the time.

                 Destination weddings can be a great way to save money, as only the people you really love will usually drop the chunk of change to fly to your exotic locale, making it not only more personal than the standard giant shindig, but cutting down the price per guest that you have to pay.  In financial times like these, the bottom line is always a concern, but few people are going to forgo the whole “wedding and lifelong commitment to the person of your dreams” concept just to save a few bucks, so they’re looking for some way to make their budget go farther, while still getting a wedding that looks spectacular.  Consequently, my company has chosen to focus on this as one of their fall promotional campaigns, so we’re all getting additional wedding training to make us even more qualified than we already were to make your wedding spectacular.         

               On top of the training, I suddenly found myself with not one but two detailed honeymoons to arrange, a wedding registry to facilitate and a destination wedding group to send to Liberia, Costa Rica for a springtime ceremony.   I’ve never before been surrounded by so much happiness combined with so much pressure to make the perfect day all they dream it will be. It’s challenging and interesting at the same time. I’m breathing cakes and dresses, watching Rich Bride, Poor Bride on TV for tips, repeating the laws of maiden name versus married name travel (whatever your passport says has to match the name on the ticket.  I don’t  care, and neither does the government, what your name is going to be) and learning what it takes to get your marriage license translated into Spanish.  The running joke with my bf is “no, I’m not hinting at anything.  It’s just work,” and luckily he’s cool with that.  Besides, he knows I’m not that subtle. 

             Maybe it is the economy sending more people abroad.  Or maybe it’s the pressures of daily life making us all need to get away from it all.  But whatever it is, my clients sure have wedding fever!

Tags: BlogSherpa, budget, destinations, economy, honeymoons, legal restrictions, specialists, training, travel agent, weddings

Brace yourselves, it’s almost August

        In less than 14 hours it will be August.  Oh boy.  I can’t speak for other agencies (or even other branches of my agency), but over the past four years, if something weird is going to happen at work, it’s gonna happen in August.    Paperwork going missing, technical problems, a client breaking her arm, a client’s mother going missing in the US and being featured on America’s Most Wanted…  some days we just look around the office and think “damn, we couldn’t make this shit up!”  

               This is our quiet season, as people are either away on vacation already or just mentally on vacation (come on, we all know those people who wander around all summer in a foggy daze, as they’re surfing in Bali in their mind instead of focusing on their grocery shopping).  This lulls us agents into a happy sense of calm while simultaneously attracting all the strangeness to us like a dog whistle at the pound.  I mean, would you think to ask a travel agent how to say tomato in Spanish?  Really?

          So we’ll see how this year plays out.  I’ll keep you posted.  I’m getting my crash helmet ready now!

Tags: summer, travel agent, weird

Cheap flights are waiting for you!

             They’re out there.  The cheapest seats on that flight you’re eyeing.  And they can be yours.  Yours!  Mwahhahahahaha (that’s the evil scientist laugh of victory).               

            Provided you book early, that is. 

           And by booking early, I don’t mean at 8:30 in the morning, I mean 3-6 months prior to departure.  Seriously.  Those last-minute deals you remember your Uncle Buddy getting in 1989 have gone the way of the dinosaurs (with the exception of charters, but I’ll get into that later), and now if you don’t act fast, the price of your flight will continue to go up with each passing minute.  Essentially, all economy-class seats on major scheduled airlines (like Air Canada, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, etc.) are identical, but price-wise they’re divided into anywhere from 5-20 different price ranges, with a limited number of seats at each range.  The earlier you book, the higher your chances of snagging one of the cheaper seats before they all sell out and you have to move up to the next lowest option.  This is also why last-minute tickets are usually the most expensive, as all the cheap seats have sold out and you have to suck it up and take whatever’s last.  No one wants to do that.  Unless, of course, you have gobs of money just sitting around in your Scrooge McDuck cash tower, and don’t care if you waste a few extra hundred.  But in that case, what the hell are you doing flying coach?  I can hook you up with all the cushiness of business class…

         Oh, and killer seat sales?  I really wouldn’t bet on it.  Every day another airline’s in the news as it struggles to stay out of bankruptcy, so giving away all their profits is not likely to happen any time soon.

            As I mentioned earlier, the exception to this rule is charter airlines.  They don’t fly nearly as frequently on limited routes, so having empty seats hits them harder financially as the larger carriers.  This is where we find the CAD$50.00 one way flights to London (not counting the CAD$275.00 tax, of course) and the awesome week at a Cancun all-inclusive resort for CAD$750.00 plus tax package deals.    Price-wise, charters are a great deal.   And with a lot of the smaller, unreputable charter companies not surviving the recession, the ones that remain are the ones with good service, good reputations and better financial footing, so they’re much less likely to go under between the time you’ve purchased your ticket and actually get to travel.   The flipside is that they don’t fly daily, so you need to be a bit flexible with your dates, your luggage limit is much lower (those gianttubs of gummi bears you want to bring home for each of the grandkids?  Perfect, as long as you have no clothes or other souvenirs that might push you past the free luggage allowance.  Over that, you’re paying crazy high fees per extra kilo – please see Scrooge McDuck note above.  This is a true story, too.  The passenger had to load all her gummi bears into a cardboard box, cover it in duct tape and pay extra to get them home from Frankfurt) and you’re more likely to have big screens instead of seatback TVs on your long-haul.  For the amount you’re saving, it can be a very even trade.

              But for those of us who can only take certain days off and/or really want those 12kg worth of gummi bears (umm, this is making me hungry, I should have used an example I didn’t like), the only way to guarantee you’re not paying hundreds more than the guy next to you reading the in-flight magazine over your shoulder is to book early.  Think of it this way, the earlier you book, the more time you get to just chill and plan what you’re going to do on your vacation.  Or pay off that Visa bill.

Tags: airlines, BlogSherpa, charters, deals, Flights, luggage, price, savings, travel agent

Vacation Anatomy part 3: The memories

                “Two weeks away, feels like the whole world should have changed, but I’m home now, and things still look the same.”  I think Dido puts it really well in this line from Sand in My Shoes, as that post-vacation letdown never gets any easier, no matter how often you travel.  It’s over.  You had spent such a long time anticipating this trip, and then you went and now… now what? 

          Now it’s time to develop those pictures, that’s what.  Just because the physical part of your trip is completed doesn’t mean your vacation is done.  Go through each exposure and laugh at the face you’re making in that one or how cool the Eiffel Tower looks in this one.  Take out all those cool new souvenirs and remember the story behind how you found that perfect vase in a tiny little shop down a dark “oh my God, why am I walking down here?” alley, but it turned out to be a total treasure trove.  Call up all your close friends and arrange to meet over coffee so you can give them the gift you brought back for them and describe all the cool things you saw.  Yes, your vacation might be technically over, but it’ll still be fresh in your mind for months, years to come.   Embrace this.   Use the words “remember that time…” as much as possible and milk every good feeling you can out of your trip.

           Of course, now that one trip is behind you, we can smoothly transition back  into the Anticipation stage again.   Travel is like a drug, once you get it in your system it’s hard to get out and it leaves you craving your next fix.   So do it.  Start thinking about where to go next.  I mean, you have to do something with those vacation days, right? 

Tags: BlogSherpa, memories, photos, souvenirs, travel agent

Vacation Anatomy part 2: The trip itself

           Okay, so now you’re off.  All your worldly possessions are crammed in your wheeled nylon sidekick, you have a complimentary bag of peanuts in your pocket and your camera batteries fully charged.  I’m not going to tell you how to travel, that’s a very personal thing and can vary dramatically from person to person.  But I am going to say: enjoy every second of it.

               Whether you’ve been to the destination a dozen times before or it’s your very first, the most important thing is that you have fun while you’re there.  Without a doubt, everyone gets out of a vacation exactly what they put into it.  Happiness is contagious.  Regardless if you can communicate with the people around you or not. a smile is universal and can go farther than you think in breaking down barriers.  Things have a tendency to go awry on vacations (be it a late plane connection, mislaid luggage, a disappointing city tour or even simply getting lost), but the secret shared by all great travelers is to not let that event ruin your whole trip. Far too often I’ve seen it where something goes a bit off-track at the beginning of a vacation, and, despite the fact that the matter was resolved, the passengers continue to mope about it for the remainder of the trip.   All this does is bring them and the people around them down.  Move on.  Roll with it.  Don’t rob yourself of enjoying your hard-earned vacation.  You spent a lot of time and money on this, you deserve for it to be great.     

              Remember, the  joy is in the details.  Even a trip to the supermarket can be fun if you look at it from the right angle (”They have seafood tempura flavoured chips?  Cool! ”, “It called Coke Light here instead of Diet Coke!”) and revel in all that your destination has to offer.  Then, no matter where you are and what you’re doing, you’re guaranteed to have great memories of your vacation. 

            But eventually you have to go home, which brings us to Stage 3…

Tags: BlogSherpa, enjoyment, luggage, memories, Tips, travel agent

Vacation Anatomy part 1: the anticipation

               I’ve been sitting here, staring at this computer for hours wondering what to blog about.  From what I can find through google, most travel blogs are only for the duration of each person’s specific trip, so nobody has to write to fill the time in between vacations.  That got me thinking: why?  What is it about the “gap” days/months/years that fail to inspire bloggers?  Granted, the most interesting part of any vacation is the time you’re actually on it, but the joy of travel is so much bigger than just the dates you book off from work that it deserves some attention, too.  My Mom always told me that “every vacation comes in three parts: the anticipation, the actually going, and the talking about it afterwards”, and she’s right.

           The anticipation is the longest and hardest to define part of every vacation, as it can take many forms.  It starts with that first niggle at the back of your mind that you’d like to go somewhere, as, even before you’re actually planning anything, you’re already anticipating it.   Watching that episode of Globe Trekker when they go to Brazil, or even seeing the Batchelorette go to Hawaii; hearing your friends talk about how much they loved Vegas; whatever it takes to get your travel motor running. 

         This then leads into the inevitable (and highly enjoyable) internet search phase.  Depending on how research-centric you are this can take an hour or months before you decide “yep, this place has exactly what I’m looking for in a vacation” and you drop by to see me at work.  I have tons of friends/clients who don’t do any research at all, they just decide to go someplace and book it, and on the flip side, there’s an equal amount of people who end up with that giant binder of yahoo printouts and know down to the second what they’re going to do.  I’m somewhere in the middle.  I like my research, knowing what the must-see sights are and exactly how to get there (on public transportation, if possible.  Skytrains/subways/buses rock), and knowing all about my hotel and it’s location, but I’m not staying up nights obsessively googling. 

           And now you’re booked.  Fully committed.  Non-refundable.  I love the feeling you get when your official tickets are in your hot little hands for the first time, it really hits home that “Holy crap, I’m going to _______!”  This is awesome!  I need a moneybelt!”  This segues into the giddy phase, when just the mention of your destination (or travel in general) can cause you to drift away into daydreamland, a far away look in your eyes and a stupid grin on your face.  Think of that TV commercial where the kid’s jumping on his bed wearing a snorkel as his parents book the tropical vacation.  That too could be you!  This is one of my favorite phases, as I love that happy, swimmy feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Come to think of it, it’s a lot like prepping for date (but with more non-emotional baggage), you’re all excited, but you still have to remember everything you need to do/buy/take with you so you have the best time.   

            And before you know it all the days have been checked off on your calendar, you’re all packed, you’ve got someone watering your plants for you and it’s time to enter Stage 2…

Tags: BlogSherpa, Tips, travel agent