Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Save 15% on Your Next Southwest Roundtrip

Paypal is sponsoring 15% off a roundtrip airplane ticket on Southwest
http://luv.southwest.com/servlet/formlink/f?kOHpjQSRDW

Terms and Conditions
Limited number of promotion codes available for this offer.

15% discount valid for one-time use at southwest.com off the total amount of any roundtrip purchase before taxes and fees.

Purchase must be made between November 3, 2009 and December 1, 2009 for travel November 3, 2009 through January 31, 2010.

Blackout dates apply November 20, 2009 through December 1, 2009 and December 18, 2009 through January 4, 2010. If any portion of travel falls on a blackout date the discount will not apply.

The discount is only valid with the provided Promotion Code and is not combinable with other Promotion Codes or fares available exclusively through the web tool “DING!”.

This promotion does not include Senior fares.

This promotion includes all Business Select, Anytime, and Wanna Get Away fares.

Discount does not include taxes and fees.

Roundtrip purchase required.

Changes made to the itinerary after purchase may eliminate qualifications for this promotion.

Youth, Child, Infant, Military, and Government Fares are not available for purchase at southwest.com.

Reservations made through southwestvacations.com or swabiz.com are not eligible for this promotion.

Some People Give Travel Agents A Bad Name

It make me really mad when these large online agencies that undercut the travel agents just to make a quick sale without providing any additional services.  This leaves the client possible on clueless on what to do in the ports, what goes on during a cruise, what do you need to do before you leave on a cruise, or any other questions that come up.  After you save a couple of bucks with these agencies, they try to charge you to ask any questions because you are taking away from their call center sales.

What makes me even more mad is when these agencies steal from people and then go out of business to get away from all the problems they caused.  Take in point the most recent example Ecruisestore.com which went out of business last week.  Ecruisestore was taking credit card payments for vacations themselves and in most cases not passing the payment onto the supplier for the vacation.  This kind of tactic is wrong and has left a lot of people who thought they had their dream vacation with nothing but a charge on their credit card.  I feel bad for these people because a lot of them take a lot a time, effort, and money to make a vacation happen.  Now these people have to scramble to fix the problems this agency has made.

I want to give anyone who is reading this one tip when booking a vacation with a travel agent.  Make sure the agent is charging your credit directly with the cruise line or supplier and not taking the payment themselves.  What I always tell clients is that they can go on the travel suppliers website right after they get off the phone and see their reservation their with their payment.  If you can't see that, then that is a big red flag and should be handled with your travel agent right away.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Carnival Triumph Visit

One of the great things the cruise lines do is allow their travel partners to tour cruise ships when they are in port.  This allows the travel agent community to experience the product they are selling and allows them to give the the client a first hand experience without having to pay for a cruise.  Living in New England, the number of cruise ships that pass through Boston is limited to cruises stopping on their way to Canada and cruises that leave Boston going to Bermuda.  I recently went on my first ship inspection with Carnival when the Carnival Triumph came into town on a port day during her 7 day New England and Canada cruise.

The Carnival Triumph is a beautiful ship that is kept together very well.  I was able to view all of her public rooms on a self-guided tour of the ship.  Then we met back in the lounge where our regional business development manager gave us an update on Carnival.

The best part of the tour was I got to have my most favorite cruise ship dessert, Carnival's warm chocolate melting cake.  If you have ever been on a Carnival cruise, you know what I mean!!!

The Triumph is currently cruising out of my favorite cruise port New Orleans.


To see some pictures I took, click here: Carnival Triumph