Most of you know I am in the business of helping people have great vacations. I think what I like about it most is the satisfaction of having someone allow me to help them arrange their cruise or land vacation and then when they get back home hear them go on and on about how great a vacation they had. Believe it or not most of us in this business see ourselves not as agents but as facilitators. That is, my job one is to help make your dream vacation come true. However, if your going to have the benefit of our experience and expertise you are going to have to ask. And with that, I'll get to my point.
Have you ever hear the expression, "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray." Well that has never been truer in any industry than it is in the travel industry. With all the online booking companies it is even truer today than ever before. Rest assured, if anything can go wrong it will and will go wrong in spades.
For most of you your annual vacation is the single largest financial investment you will make aside from your home and your car. Even a "cheap" 4 day cruise for a family of four can cost you as much as $1,300.00. And that just gets the four of you on the ship. Nor small investment for what amounts to a long weekend.
As I see it you have a couple of choices when making you vacation plans. You can take advantage of the experience and expertise of someone like me or you can do it yourself. Now I can tell you that doing it yourself WILL NOT save you any money or time. It may give you the satisfaction of saying, "I did all by myself." I can't say using someone like me to help you will save you any money I do know it will not cost you any more than if you did it yourself.
Like I said, it's your investment and you have a choice on how you will make it. Just remember the Biblical axiom, "There is safety in many counselors." Now, I could use this space and list all the happy clients we have but you'd probably just yawn. So, I want to simply recount one sad story that came to my attention just yesterday.
Yesterday evening about 3:30 p.m. my office phone rang and on the other end of the line was a young woman who quickly asked, "Can you define an "unforeseen circumstance." I immediately asked her her name and what prompted her to call. Here is her story: Seems she had gone online to an online travel service (this one just happened to be Priceline) where she searched, found and paid for her family's vacation. She even had the foresight to buy the trip insurance that Priceline offered. She then set about preparing for her vacation confident that she had done everything just right. Not bad and not that different from what everyone else who uses these online booking companies would do.
Then it happened. Something came up that she had to cancel the trip. She called the customer service number she had been given and was told they would not refund her payment and gave her an 800 number to the Berkley Group their insurance provider. She was then told, "You'll have to call them, get some papers filled out and file a claim." All of which she did. Their response, " We only refund for 'unforeseen' circumstances."
Now she wanted to know, "what is an unforeseen circumstance?" I explained it to her and she seemed confused and said, "That's what I thought." After a few moments more conversation she then sheepishly said, "You don't think I'm going to get my money do you?" To which I answered, "I don't know but it doesn't look good." Then I said, "If you get your money back that will be great but even if you don't you have learned a valuable lesson." She asked, "A what is that?" To which I replied, "You have learned that when you book your vacation online and something goes wrong you are pretty much on your own."
Folks you can book many kinds of travel online but when things go wrong you are on your own. It rarely cost you more to use a travel consultant or Agent and you have someone in your corner to help.
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