A Light At The End Of The Tunnel?

 I’m beginning to wonder how any times I have to reinvent my plan for world travel, before I actually get to participate in it. I think (hope) this time it’s for real.

In my new position as a home based travel advisor, I have done quite well booking two group trips for next spring: one – an organized group of women with a connection (we all belong to Women Welcome Women Worldwide, an international group that I joined 3 years ago as a way to connect with people around the world on what was to be my nomadic 1.5 – 2 year period); and a block of cabins on a great repositioning cruise from Dubai, UAE to Trieste, Italy through the Suez Canal. This isn’t actually a group travelling together, but another travel agent had some cabin space on hold  at a guaranteed price and allowed me to join her in filling the spaces. (There are are perks for selling numerous cabins on a ship or places on a tour). 

I like this method of booking travel as it will allow me to go on these trips also and means that my trips aren’t always going to be solo. I hope to book an organized tour each year for the 5W women’s group for the places that are more difficult to travel to on my own.

I also had a great opportunity come my way for next week. Ama Waterways is a luxury river cruise company in Europe and they have started sailing again this summer.  They are operating with only fully vaccinated staff and guests and at ony about 60 – 70% capacity. They do have paying guests but not enough to fill the reduced capacity and have opened up these peak time sailings to travel agents as FAM (familiarization) trips so that we can experience how river cruising is different than the ocean version and can better sell their product. The discount on pricing makes this very desirable and actually possible for me. I have even found someone to come with me – a new friend here in Parksville!

We will be sailing from Vilshofen, Germany, down the Danube to Budapest, Hungary. Budapest has been one of the eastern European cities that I have most wanted to visit, for many years, I will even get to celebrate my birthday there!  We will fly to Munich and spend a day there, then travel by train to Vilshofen to explore for a few hours before boarding the Ama Verde which has been newly renovated. In fact, I think we are the first cruise on her since the renovation. We will be stopping in Passau, Germany then linz, Weissenkirchen & Vienna, Austria, Bratislava, Slovakia and finally docking in Budapest. We will stay in Budapest for 4 more days before returning home.

I’m really looking forward to docking in, and being able to walk through, the city centers as well as participating in small group tours to local sites.

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

I have a new venture!

In December, I joined Travel Best Bets as a ‘Connected Agent’, one who works from home instead of in the office.  I hope that in a few years I will be able to transition out of supervising assistants in providing speech therapy. I will probably continue to see a few of my own clients,  because I really do love helping adults whose first language is not English, learn to pronounce English better so that their accent doesn’t hold them back in their careers.

When this opportunity came up, I took it because I was so frustrated at not being able to cancel my flights when I had to cancel my 3 month Australia trip in 2019 because I couldn’t get through to them, and because I booked my own flights, I didn’t have access to the agent phone lines to cancel. So I was just a ‘no show’. (I did eventually get my money back though, because everything was booked on a credit card that has trip insurance as one of its benefits.) Along the line, I do hope to make some money on commissions by building a clientele, but my main motivation was to get access to deals and booking engines as my own agent so that I am never left hanging again.

For the last few months I have been taking a number of training courses on the things one needs to know to be a travel consultant. It is very interesting and there certainly is a lot to learn! So, I rebooked my friend Linda’s and my Baltic cruise for the end of August 2022 with the agency it had originally been booked through (I had to go with them to access all my future cruise credits from the cancellation), and then I did my own booking for a repositioning transatlantic trip to the US, on the same ship immediately following.

Last week a great looking opportunity came in to my email from MSC for a 20 night repo cruise from Dubai to Italy through the Suez Canal in the spring of 2022. One of the other agents at Travel Best Bets has a group block of cabins on this cruise and is willing to let me work with her to fill the block. This is my first opportunity to be an agent for others in coordinating not just someone’s vacation, but jumping in with both feet into organizing a group booking.

This is all very energizing and just the boost I need, after almost a year of living alone in a new city during Covid!