1 reply to this topic

[WreckWench]

Your Travel Rights: The Three Golden Rules of Holiday Travel
by John Hawks (Reprinted With Permission)

Recent surveys by AAA and other travel groups confirm:

This year’s holiday season (Thanksgiving to New Year’s) will be one of the busiest in history!

Take a look at lost luggage, for example. This fall, U.S. airlines broke an all-time record -- and not in a good way! -- for the amount of checked luggage that was somehow lost, damaged, or delayed. Those new rules on liquids and gels in carry-on luggage led to a huge spike in the number of checked bags, and in September alone more than 380,000 flyers reported problems with luggage (that’s up more than 90 percent from the same month last year!). ABC News reported recently that airport authorities in Las Vegas are now testing radio frequency ID tags that are placed on checked bags this holiday season, in an attempt to insure that bags are loaded before passengers board their flights.

Since 1989, I’ve worked with many national travel and consumer groups to protect (and expand) the legal rights of travelers. After two books on the subject, plus hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles and interviews along the way, I’d like to share with you my “Three Golden Rules of Holiday Travel.”

Holiday Travel Golden Rule # 1: Things will go wrong on your holiday trip -- due, in most cases, to no fault of your own.

The year-end holidays bring out millions of travelers who fly only once a year (e.g., for Thanksgiving or for Christmas). These consumers may not understand that, despite the best-laid travel plans, accidents and mistakes and acts of God happen on the road. Bags get misrouted or lost, even if you arrive at the airport hours ahead of your flight time. Hotels run out of non-smoking rooms, even though you specifically requested one months in advance. Flat tires happen on rental cars, no matter how thoroughly you inspected the vehicle before you left the rental car lot.

As one best-selling book says, “Don’t sweat the small stuff -- and it’s all small stuff!”

Holiday Travel Golden Rule # 2: Even if you’re 100 percent right, you’ll lose in the end if you treat travel workers badly.

Two months ago, I flew from Jacksonville, Fla., to Raleigh, N.C., for a lunchtime business meeting. My discounted airline ticket was routed through Charlotte, where the airline informed us upon landing from JAX that the connecting flight had been canceled. As a savvy traveler, I dialed the airline’s reservations center as I walked to the nearest service counter and began exploring options for replacement flights.

As I stood patiently in the middle of a line that soon swelled to more than 100 passengers, I watched -- at first in amazement, and then in fits of laughter -- as one person after another yelled at the counter agents, cursed them and their families, stomped their feet, threw bags on the ground, and threatened to have the airline agents fired. I watched with a smile on my face as the counter agents took the abuse but did as little as possible to help these abusive customers find alternate flights.

When my turn came, I stepped up to the counter and thanked the agent for helping me. I told her I was sorry about the trouble with the flights. I smiled a lot and kept a friendly tone of voice. Armed with the flight information I’d gotten over my cell phone from the airline’s res center, I gave the agent specific flight numbers and told her I thought seats were available on those flights for me. Lo and behold, within three minutes I left the counter with confirmed seats on a different carrier aboard a flight that got me into Raleigh in plenty of time for my meeting.

Remind clients that yelling at airline agents, hotel front desk clerks, cruise line porters, and other frontline travel workers never works. The longer they rant and rave, the more creative those workers will be in avoiding ways to help them (and in finding new ways to screw up the rest of their trip!)

Holiday Travel Golden Rule # 3: Without a travel agent, clients are on their own.

This tried-and-true slogan is absolutely true. When consumers book online, and things go wrong with their trips, they’re stuck sending emails or calling a res center in India for help.

On the other hand, when they book through an agent, they can always reach them -- as a living, breathing human being who is there -- for support.

That peace of mind will be worth its weight in gold when clients are stuck in an airport far from home, with snowdrifts on the runways and tired children crying in the gate area and the last food outlets in the airport closing for the night!

Best wishes to everyone everywhere for a safe -- and trouble-free -- holiday season!

[Brinybay]

Holiday Travel Golden Rule # 2: Even if you’re 100 percent right, you’ll lose in the end if you treat travel workers badly.

Remind clients that yelling at airline agents, hotel front desk clerks, cruise line porters, and other frontline travel workers never works. The longer they rant and rave, the more creative those workers will be in avoiding ways to help them (and in finding new ways to screw up the rest of their trip!)

That goes for pretty much every front-line worker, be they travel workers or asking you if you want paper or plastic.

Edited by Brinybay, 22 December 2006 - 10:50 PM.