TRAVEL TOPIC Sept09
Planning a holiday by Ray
In mid-2008 I started planning for a (slightly) early retirement and what better way to celebrate than to travel and SKI (spend the kid’s inheritance).
We had previously enjoyed the standard Canadian Rockies and Alaska cruise and more recently a Greece, Turkey plus Black Sea Cruise.
Both of these tours were expertly handled by the Travelscene Samford team so it was off to Jenny once again to help us get the new trip organised.
This time around time wasn’t a factor, although I’ve always been a bit ‘tight’ and whilst the inheritance was fair game we didn’t want to compromise the house, so value for money was important.
Also, at my age, I don’t enjoy travelling in a cigar tube for 20 hours with my knees up around my ears, so we needed to find a realistically priced Business Class ‘combo’ and factor in some stopovers.
We wanted to visit Spain, Portugal and Morocco, plus a few ‘add-ons’ and then catch up with a Provence and Tuscany tour we saw advertised last year, so carriers and connections were a bit of a challenge.
Jenny managed to get a combination of Star Alliance flights which hit all the right places and which gave us Business Class comfort to/ from Asia. We later upgraded our Brisbane to Bangkok leg using points from previous trips.
Then, as my old boss used to say, "You must have plans, but son they’ve got to be flexible".
One of the tours on which we were booked was cancelled and they tried to convert us to another tour ending in Madrid instead of Lisbon from where we had already paid for a non-refundable flight to Paris, and they could not even guarantee the alternate tour would go.
Jenny located a similar tour with another company which was confirmed to go and they agreed to honour the 5% early-bird discount we had already paid. We lost our pre-paid Portugal flight and now needed to get from Madrid to Paris. The cheapest flight was exorbitant but Jenny found us a half price first class sleeper train deal including meals and drinks which cost a third of the airfare and saved us a nights accommodation in Paris – should be fun.
Then Swissair decided they don’t want to fly to Singapore any more and were planning to drop us off in Hong Kong instead.
Once again it was Jenny to the rescue. With some tenacious ‘negotiation’ she convinced Swiss to re-book us onto a Singapore Air flight instead which leaves Zurich just a few hours before Swiss was due to depart.
I mention the above because, if you want a good deal and you are trying to co-ordinate a load of separate tours and activities you are almost inevitably going to be booking (and even paying) several months ahead. If then part of your planned itinerary gets changed or cancelled you need someone who can pick it up immediately and who has the negotiating ‘muscle’ to sort out the problem – even worse if something like this happens whilst you are overseas.
The www is a wonderful thing for reviewing hotels, locations, etc. but you need to be extremely confident to plan the whole trip with no safety net.
One last thing. If you have an elderly relative don’t rely on your travel insurance to get you home quickly if the worst should happen. Check the exclusions for what they say about ‘pre-existing conditions’ after all, when we are getting on in years just about everything is ‘pre-existing’ and a lot may hinge on what gets written on the paperwork.
Now all we need to do is get a 2GB card for the camera, pre-pay the mobile, get some currency, do a trial bag pack (and agree to leave half of it behind), and WE’RE OFF.
Both of these tours were expertly handled by the Travelscene Samford team so it was off to Jenny once again to help us get the new trip organised.
This time around time wasn’t a factor, although I’ve always been a bit ‘tight’ and whilst the inheritance was fair game we didn’t want to compromise the house, so value for money was important.
Also, at my age, I don’t enjoy travelling in a cigar tube for 20 hours with my knees up around my ears, so we needed to find a realistically priced Business Class ‘combo’ and factor in some stopovers.
We wanted to visit Spain, Portugal and Morocco, plus a few ‘add-ons’ and then catch up with a Provence and Tuscany tour we saw advertised last year, so carriers and connections were a bit of a challenge.
Jenny managed to get a combination of Star Alliance flights which hit all the right places and which gave us Business Class comfort to/ from Asia. We later upgraded our Brisbane to Bangkok leg using points from previous trips.
Then, as my old boss used to say, "You must have plans, but son they’ve got to be flexible".
One of the tours on which we were booked was cancelled and they tried to convert us to another tour ending in Madrid instead of Lisbon from where we had already paid for a non-refundable flight to Paris, and they could not even guarantee the alternate tour would go.
Jenny located a similar tour with another company which was confirmed to go and they agreed to honour the 5% early-bird discount we had already paid. We lost our pre-paid Portugal flight and now needed to get from Madrid to Paris. The cheapest flight was exorbitant but Jenny found us a half price first class sleeper train deal including meals and drinks which cost a third of the airfare and saved us a nights accommodation in Paris – should be fun.
Then Swissair decided they don’t want to fly to Singapore any more and were planning to drop us off in Hong Kong instead.
Once again it was Jenny to the rescue. With some tenacious ‘negotiation’ she convinced Swiss to re-book us onto a Singapore Air flight instead which leaves Zurich just a few hours before Swiss was due to depart.
I mention the above because, if you want a good deal and you are trying to co-ordinate a load of separate tours and activities you are almost inevitably going to be booking (and even paying) several months ahead. If then part of your planned itinerary gets changed or cancelled you need someone who can pick it up immediately and who has the negotiating ‘muscle’ to sort out the problem – even worse if something like this happens whilst you are overseas.
The www is a wonderful thing for reviewing hotels, locations, etc. but you need to be extremely confident to plan the whole trip with no safety net.
One last thing. If you have an elderly relative don’t rely on your travel insurance to get you home quickly if the worst should happen. Check the exclusions for what they say about ‘pre-existing conditions’ after all, when we are getting on in years just about everything is ‘pre-existing’ and a lot may hinge on what gets written on the paperwork.
Now all we need to do is get a 2GB card for the camera, pre-pay the mobile, get some currency, do a trial bag pack (and agree to leave half of it behind), and WE’RE OFF.
