When you book travel on Expedia or Travelocity, you usually get a pretty good price. Sometimes, it is better than a price I will quote you. But sometimes for an important trip, you need to take into consideration what you are getting. It's a do it yourself vacation. YOU are responsible for everything on that trip. The last step on many of those websites is to ask you if you want travel protection for an additional fee. But you've already been sucked in by the amazingly low price and you don't want to have to go and tack another $150 per person onto your price. So, I would guess that about 85% of the time, that answer is a resounding NO! When I quote a price on a vacation, unless my client tells me otherwise, up front, I always include the price of travel protection in each of my quotes.
I think it just makes sense to protect your $3,000 vacation with $300 worth of travel protection that will allow cancellation for any reason in many cases right up until airport checkin time. It protects you medically above and beyond what your Blue Cross Blue Shield might cover, it covers lost luggage, missed flights, and will even compensate you for flight delays that result in an aborted itinerary. When I went to Europe 5 years ago, one piece of my luggage didn't make the trip. I finally got it back 3 weeks after I got back home to Dallas with several items missing out of it. If I had used travel protection and had a travel agent who explained it to me, I would have been able to file a claim that would have not only gotten me some new clothes and luggage during my trip but I would have received additional compensation later on. Instead I was left to try to fight it out with an uncaring airline who continually insisted that there was no wrong doing and that if I had travel protection, it would cover that.
Earlier this week I listened to a webinar for FareBuzz. They are the new travel search engine on my website, which you can reach by the way at www.placesuwillgo.com, and one of the gentlemen conducting the webinar began to talk about the insurance offered by FareBuzz. He was one of those people whose travel plans were effected by that Icelandic volcano a few years ago. Now obviously in a situation like that the airline will attempt to get you on another flight. But if there are no flights heading out for a week or two and you were scheduled to board a $7,000 river cruise the next day you are completely out of luck. The airline is only going to try to reschedule a non-refundable ticket, but they won't give you any money back on the ticket even in the event of a natural disaster. If you miss your river cruise completely and therefore decide not to reschedule the air, you lose all of your airfare. The river cruise is going to leave it's home port on it's scheduled day whether you arrive or not. If you miss the cruise and you don't have travel protection even if it's due to a volcano, you lose every penny you spent on it. With just one volcanic episode your dream vacation could turn into a very expensive nightmare quickly.
I recently worked with a family who planned a $10,000 Disney World vacation. It was, for them, to be the trip of a lifetime. But due to the illness of one of the people traveling the entire vacation had to be canceled. Now, even without travel protection, Disney was set to give them a full refund since they weren't set to travel for more than 130 days from the cancellation date. However, the airfare for all 8 members of the family was non-refundable and would have been lost without travel protection. They got all their money back except for the price of the insurance saving them more than $2,000!
I haven't even mentioned yet that with most travel protection plans that you get through a travel agent, if the price of your trip goes down between the time you book it and the time you travel, you can get the lower price! That's right, there are some occasions when your travel protection is paid for by a price reduction before you ever even leave town! The caveat here is that if a component of the trip sells out prior to travel, then no other price reductions can be taken. In other words, if you book a trip to Cancun on flight XYZ with American Airlines staying at Best Resort Ever in Cancun and flight XYZ sells out of seats a month after you book, then obviously the price of the trip is frozen at that point since that EXACT trip could not be booked at a lower price by anyone else at that point. Likewise, if Best Resort Ever runs out of rooms exactly like yours for that week, no one else can book the trip at a lower price exactly as you booked it so the price of the trip is frozen.
I don't like being a voice of doom. So I'll close today with this. If you book through Travelocity or Expedia or any of the other travel sites, consider the travel protection, generally the peace of mind it can provide is worth the price. If you would prefer to have someone else do the worrying for you and explain all aspects of the travel protection options while you just flit from location to location taking photos and creating memories, work through a milk drinking, Donny Osmond loving travel agent.
Have a great Thursday and stay warm!
No comments:
Post a Comment