How to Know Your Travel Arrangements are Rock Solid!
We all know the drill, right? It’s vacation time so we start scouring the Internet to find the best deal for our family.
How often do you book on a discount vacation site and bypass reading all those pesky terms and conditions on the way to the checkout? Have you ever been burned by the fine-print? Did you know that those terms are not always in our favour, and don’t always guarantee anything about that vacation we just booked?
So how can we solidify our travel arrangements and avoid getting burned? Well, definitely do everything in your power to book with someone reputable and with a great customer track record. If you do feel the need to shop around, I’d highly recommend you read through the fine-print each time you book on a new site for the first time. You want to make sure you feel comfortable with those terms before you book. Pay special attention to pricing guarantees and the timing of when money actually changes hands from you to the booking agent to the end resort, hotel or airline.
Avoid Another LowCostHolidays.com Mistake
As their name says, LowCostHolidays.com was a online travel agency offering discount vacation packages to customers in the United Kingdom (UK). Hundreds of thousands of people used this booking site to find great deals on family vacations.
A couple of weeks ago, LowCostHolidays.com closed down, unexpectedly stranding 140,000 customers whose summer vacation plans are now in jeopardy! Financial hardship and increased competition were blamed for the collapse.
Now, this begs the question: What happens to all of those existing bookings?
Turns out, like many discount travel sites, LowCostHolidays.com was merely an intermediary between customers and travel services. This makes the “what to do next” question a little more tricky.
Airlines believe they don’t necessarily need help to fill their flights. As a result, they demand payment upfront from any booking site. This is great news for LowCostHolidays.com customers as most flights were booked and paid in full with the airline, so tickets remain valid.
That’s where the good news ends, unfortunately. Many hotels, resorts, transfer companies, etc. rely on booking agents to help deliver their business. This means they often don’t require payment upfront, and booking sites often paid them up to 2 months in arrears of when the vacation actually took place. Per the notice on the LowCostHolidays.com website, most of these bookings were not paid to the dealers, and are therefore not secured travel arrangements.
The Internet is full of tempting deals on travel. Just be sure to do some due diligence of your own before handing over your credit card. Make sure you review the fine-print when using a new booking site to see exactly how much of the risk is actually in your hands.
Rock Solid Travel Agency Websites
If you’re like me, you don’t want to have to comb through fine-print of websites each time you want to take your family on a hard-earned vacation. So what can you do to protect yourself and your travel arrangements?
Find a trustworthy booking agent with a rock solid guarantee.
I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather put in some work now and reap the rewards going forward then work hard every time I want to book a vacation. All it takes is a bit of research … and I’m not talking simple Google searches!
If you want a reliable booking agent, the World Travel Awards would be a logical place to start. Personally, I book with the one who has won the World’s Leading Travel Club award for the past 4 years. They have amazing terms, and my travel arrangements are rock solid!
Okay, so that company is great, but what about price? Doesn’t this great service come at a premium??
In many cases, I’d agree with you, but this company also has some of the best price guarantees in the business. That’s a big reason they keep winning the award year after year. Seriously, these guarantees should be industry standard, but for some reason they’re very difficult to find. They’ll beat any published lower price on flights and hotels, or even send you on a trip for free if you manage to beat their packaged rate! These guarantees and more leave me feeling at ease with my travel arrangements any time I book a vacation.
Are you seeing how awesome this is?? If you’d like the VIP hook-up click the button below and never worry about your rock solid travel arrangements again!
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Be sure to comment below and let me know if you have any special tips to ensure your travel plans are rock solid!
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Resources Mentioned:
World’s Leading Travel Club – Rated the best Travel Club in the world for the past 4 years in a row. Not only that, they also win Best Travel Club in most of the major regions of the world too! Learn More
LowCostHolidays.com – A now defunct discount travel site offering vacation packages to customers in the United Kingdom. Their collapse left 140,000 customers without travel packages they had already paid for. Learn More
Phenomenal tips on travel! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Joseph, glad to help!
Great tips and definitely will be put to use here! Thanks for sharing!
Happy to have helped, Zach!
Great tips especially about when booking vacation packages
Dr. Lisa
Happy you received some value, Dr. Lisa
Wow. So that’s how many of those 3rd party sites work! Great insight, Bruce.
Thanks so much Julia … pretty shocking, right?!?
Wow, such interesting info. I was glad to hear the customers of Low Cost Holidays still have their flights – that’s often the most expensive part! Thanks again for sharing.
You’re right Courtney. It was great to see the customers were mostly taken care of
Such an interesting insight into 3rd party travel sites – really useful!
Thanks Charles. Always best to know exactly what you’re dealing with.
This straight-to-the-point article is the exact guide that every newbie traveler needs! We are often lured by the cheap cost when travelling, which makes us forget the trade-off between price and quality. 5 stars for this article!
Thanks so much Fiona! Yes, there’s so much more to think about than just price.
These tips are very helpful. I also like the insight in those 3rd party travel sites.
Sanne Grieten recently posted…What To See & Do In Xi’An
Thanks so much Sanne. So glad you found some value in this post
Man, that sucks for those folks who booked with lowcostholidays.com. I seldom use travel services like this but to be honest, I think they would have made me more vulnerable to a low cost holiday fiasco. Quite frankly I wouldn’t have known which site to use and might have signed up for the first deal I saw. The World Travel Awards is a great reference for someone like me who might not know where to look for a reputable travel site.
Thanks so much David! Yes, knowing where to look is sometimes the biggest battle we have
Very useful tips and reference for those who don’t have the time or resources to do too much research and plan out every bit of their vacation. In such cases, having a really reputed and reliable agency plan out your vacation details for you really helps a lot. I mostly plan my own tips, but can’t rule out the benefit of outsourcing the work once in a while.
Very true Neha, Always nice to know where to go to if we do want the halp
This is an eye-opening post. I agree…in the excitement to land a tempting deals, we often miss out on due diligence and review of fine-print. No one can really fool us, if we do our research well. I’m going to be even more careful in future.
So true Punita! We all know we should to the research and read the fineprint, but it’s tough to actually put that into practice every time.
Wow that is a real bummer about low cost holidays.com and their customers. I can’t imagine what they are going through right now. I would be in complete panic mode. I think that a lot of people overlook terms and conditions and even final prices for that matter.
Christina recently posted…Tongabezi – a Luxurious Tree House Resort in Zambia
You’re right Christina. It’s rarely a good idea to book anything based only on the face-value of a price
Great tips you have here. I was a travel agent years ago and i have seen people get ripped off, unfortunately.
Thanks so much for your insight Sherrie! It really is unfortunate when it happens.