Irresponsible Travellers

Bangalore

I have seen all sorts of websites where travellers write about their experiences (good and bad) of holidays. Personally, I consider this as a wonderful way to share experiences. Since the holiday business is based on references, this is something that we have been encouraging a lot in terms of generating business through discerning travellers. Though our website has not been great in terms of uploading all the feedback from our guests, this is an area we would like to develop slowly.

While all this sound quite wonderful, sometimes we come across TOTALLY IRRESPONSIBLE TRAVELLERS who maintain hardly any sort of decency when they engage us in business. Over the period of three years, we had some of these experiences, and had to accommodate these people considering the small size of the organisation and desperate need to ensure that we have regular flow of guests!

Who would believe that a traveller coming from a “good background “and many years of travelling experience would try to cheat the travel operator by not paying money even after the trip is over? Who would think about a traveller abusing our interpreters and guides? The latest being the day before.

A woman called from Trivandrum on a Sunday (I was in office working!) asking for details about our houseboats in Alleppey. It seems she had seen our websites and was thoroughly impressed about the content and want to experience the Blue Yonder holidays (Already flattered). Even if I don’t handle enquiries directly anymore (something I miss so much), I managed to quote the prices and connected her to Vinod who now handles all our enquiries. She agreed for the prices and we took the risk of not taking the advance.

We haven’t taken any walk-in guests so far except in one or two rare cases, and most of our trips are finalized several weeks and in most cases even several months in advance. So we normally receive all payments before the trip starts. In the above mentioned cases, there is hardly any way to have collected this. So we told her to pay to our representative in Alleppey and start the trip. We arranged a cab to pick her up from the railway station and then on arrival she refused to pay the money upfront. Since the boat has been blocked for the day the local guys went ahead with the trip. When it came to payment, she says, “Sorry, I have only 6000 with me, can’t pay the rest!”

What a %^^$!!

Do you guys have any idea of any websites where we can post details of these kind of irresponsible travellers?

I have heard about some companies publishing “black lists”. But haven’t seen it at all!
To some extend we need to ensure that none of our partners in the industry needs to go through this experience at all! There are some mechanisms that I have seen working efficiently between some operators in Karnataka and North Kerala. Since they fall in tourist circuits, they keep track of the guests and let the accommodation providers in advance about the nasty behaviour (consuming everything in the mini bar and not paying up for e.g) earlier so that the host can be well prepared.

Still, since the whole objective is to make the guests happy, they bent down their spine to the lowest level that is humanly possible and keep up their smile on their face. Even if you get thousand appreciations for your work, you just need one B^^^&&$ like the above to screw up all that by some bad mouthing!

Another moment of OTS ! :)

© GP 2007