Be prepared, 17% of American have this happen to them while on vacation

Mary Yohannan on

 You don’t want to believe something can go wrong on your vacation, but are your friends, relatives, neighbors prepared if it does?

When your relative, close friend, or neighbor tells you they are going on vacation your instinct is to be excited for them.  They usually give a few details about their upcoming amazing trip including dates, where they are going, and what they will be seeing.  A few months down the road they call you to tell you they are leaving and you wish them safe travels.  As you hang up the phone, you try to remember the details of the trip but come up short in remembering.  You shrug your shoulders and say to yourself you will 100_1068hear all about it when they get back. 

The truth is, are you prepared if something does happen?  Do you have any of the details including airline, hotel, cruise ship, travel insurance?  Are you prepared if they called and told you they needed to you to call the travel insurance company? 

In 2014 a survey was taken showing that one in six Americans or 17% of those who traveled had their travel impacted by medical problems, natural disasters like a hurricane, or mechanical or carrier caused issued which delayed their trip for more than 3 hours.  Let me make the numbers sound larger, if we had a full Southwest flight of 143 people and 17% of them will have some type of travel issue, that means 24 people on this flight.  How about a cruise ship with 3500 people?  Almost 600 of those passengers will have some type of travel issue.  That is a lot of people.  The question is, is your relative one of them?

Even when your relative tells you the details they don’t really tell you the WHOLE DETAILED ITINERARY.  If you don’t have the WHOLE DETAILED ITINERARY and you need to contact them, it can become a guessing game of where in the world are my relatives?  Don’t let this happen to you.  Ask your relative for the detailed itinerary and the information for the travel insurance company in case you would have to call on their behave.  Life is Better Traveling always provides an extra copy of the detailed itinerary to give out to a relative, neighbor or close friend just by simply asking for it.  We will not let your relative know what you paid for the trip, but they are given the details of which cruise ship, airline, hotels, and travel insurance. 

So next time you or your relatives book a vacation, make sure to set aside some time to talk. Talk about the detailed itinerary and explain that you would like them to have this just in case, or why you would like to have it of theirs. No one ever likes to plan for “just in case”, but when you realize how high the number of people impacted is then it just makes sense.  And remember that this extra itinerary is free of charge at Life is Better Traveling and we are always looking out for our travelers. Feel free to pass this email along to the people you think of while reading this!

P.S. I just had all my relatives in Europe the last two weeks and having their information on hand gave me peace of mind. 

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Why Your Next Vacation Should Be Customized?

Mary Yohannan on

Vacationing the way you too!

  At Life is Better Traveling we always say “Connecting Friends and Family through Customized Vacations.”   But what is a customized vacation?  A customized vacation is a vacation that fits your needs, desires, and overall goal of the vacation.  When you first start to plan a vacation, you get on the internet and start browsing different sites for the destination you want to go to.  All too quickly you are confronted with multiple options and many suppliers who all sell vacation packages to that destination.  It seems like an endless task to continue trying to do more research so you start asking friends.  You hear about amazing stories of their travels and you want to go more than ever.  Reality sets in that you again have to get back on the internet to do the research.  The truth call-center-1026462_1920-smalleris you don’t.

There are many different reasons you want to travel to a particular destination: the food, the sites, the people, etc.  What if you could do and see all the things that you wanted to do and see without having to choose a preset tour?  Well, that is where our travel agency comes in.  We put together customized vacation packages for what you want to do and see.  You contact us with which destination or destinations you want to see and put together a tour package that is only for you.  Do you want to fly to London on business class stay 2 nights then fly to Italy for 5 nights and then onto Portugal for 4 nights?  Guess what, we can do that for you and even recommend sight-seeing tours, provide transfers, rail, accommodations, and travel insurance.  You pick the destinations and we put it together. 

Why not a preset tour?  I have personally done the preset tours.  I had to have my luggage set outside my hotel room by 4:30am to get on the bus by 6:00am.  I had one hour to tour a city that had so much history I had to pick which single spot I wanted to see because I didn’t have time to see them all.  Did I still enjoy myself?  Yes, I did but I learned from that experience that I wanted a more relaxed vacation and I wanted to see the sites the way I wanted to see them.  I would have loved to have had a private tour guide of the Roman Baths in Bath, England, absolutely.  You better believe that next time I go, I will have a private tour guide!

 

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A customized tour must be more expensive than a preset tour, right?   I am finding that when you customize a tour it is actually less expensive then when you do a preset tour.  I have to preface though, that a customized tour is not an apple to apples comparison to a preset tour.  You are not paying for a motorcoach, driver, and tour guide for an entire vacation.  You are picking accommodations that fit your needs, tours that you want to do, and restaurants that fit your palate.  When we breakdown the pricing, it typically does come in a few hundred dollars less which helps you make the easy decision of buying travel insurance. 

But what if I am a bit nervous about doing my own thing?  That is ok.  Even though we can plan your hotel, rail, flights, car rental, etc on your own terms, we have plenty of sightseeing tours that you can do with a group.  Most of them will be half-day or full day tours, but you will be either with a small group of people to see the sights or a larger group of people, typically no more than 30 people.  This way you can have the best of both worlds!

Do you have a form I need to fill out to put together a customized tour?  No.  You simply call me and we discuss where you want to go and what you want to see.  One of my favorite things to do on the phone with you is to really get a good understanding of why you want to take this trip or vacation.  Everyone has a reason for their trip whether it is a Whiskey tour of Scotland or island hopping on Hawaii.  Whatever your reason is to take the trip, then that is what we want you to be able to do.  The trip or vacation is really what you want to make out of it. 

Now that you have a better understanding of what our travel agency can do for you in putting together a customized vacation, give us a call today and let us help you start connecting friends and family through customized vacations. 

 

Request a Travel Planning session today for FREE!