It’s so easy to book flights online these days, but unfortunately there are still people that fail to realise that sometimes you need a visa to enter a country. Like #duh.
And don’t the awesome travel agents at Brighton Travelworld in Melbourne know this all too well.
Pictured: Travel agents at Brighton Travelworld
Take this incident for example.
Brighton Travelworld received an 8am phone call recently from a client whose son had missed his outbound flight to the USA because he did not get his ESTA visa in time before rocking up at the airport. The son had booked the flight online. The mother, trying to help her son by going straight to the professionals, was concerned her son would forfeit the rest of his holiday.
That would definitely suck.
As you would expect, the team at Brighton Travelworld came to the rescue:
He managed to do his ESTA at the airport while Julie rebooked him on a Qantas flight leaving 90 minutes later. The interesting thing about this story is that the young man paid a similar amount for his replacement flight that we booked, travelled direct to LA, earned Qantas FF points, avoided Sydney, and arrived in LA earlier than the flights he booked through an Online agent.
And from the USA to Morocco, the team at Brighton Travelworld are known to come to the rescue wherever their clients may be.
After a pick pocketing incident in Morocco, a husband and wife were left without any money to their name. Both cash and their cards was stolen, putting them in a pretty nasty situation.
Luckily, because they had booked through an actual brick-and-mortor travel agency such as Brighton Travelworld, they were able to be saved. Thanks to a fantastic relationship Brighton Travelworld had with a local tour operator, they were able to approve a sum of money which was then literally handed to the clients by the local tour guide.
This would not, could not have happened online.
In another example, the A-team at Brighton Travelworld received this alarming email at 7am in the morning from a client who was travelling solo in Europe:
“Help! I am in Bilbao, having been bussed here from San Sebastián. Was on my way to Barcelona and home. Have missed my Emirates flight home. What do i do? Yes have travel insurance. Have no capacity to phone anyone!”
The client, obvisouly panicking, should have remembered that she was dealing with pros at Brighton Travelworld, who leapt to her rescue right away:
Fortunately, we were able to assist with re-booking flights, advising on luggage that became lost, and hotel accommodation, but maybe more importantly, making her feel like she wasn’t alone at 3am in the morning. She was at an airport that was almost closed, and dealing with people who didn’t appear to care. The lady couldn’t use her phone, so 28 emails later, she boarded her re-booked flight back to Australia.
Last but not least, the team at Brighton Travelworld have one last story of how sometimes you don’t get what you pay for, especially when you book something online.
This is what happened to a client of theirs that booked an Airbnb for their holiday.
“Well our first crack at Airbnb may be our last. Our digs in Lyon are pretty woeful. Nothing like the pics. More security than the airport and nothing here worth stealing. The squatters wouldn’t even stay here. Thank goodness the restaurants and bars around here look pretty nice. Just have to give it a good crack and stagger up the 4 flights to the rat’s nest in order to sleep. Picture looked ok but it was a dump. Clean but a dump. Had to carry our bags up 90 steps. Then the smallest winding steps up to the bedroom which looked like a prison cell with a mattress on the floor, and rags for curtains. The biggest joke was he had two locks on the door. It was like Fort Knox with nothing worth stealing inside. Unfortunately, the internet can make accommodations appear fabulously appealing. Then you see the reality and can be greatly disappointed.”
And what did Brighton Travelworld do? They rescued them by booking them into a hotel within just hours!
Bravo guys, bravo!
*Check out some of our other Travel Agent rescue stories, such as this Travel Agent who saved her clients caught up in a fire – sizzling stuff!
