Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

When a bank holiday weekend falls in the middle of your vacation then you need to check out what facilities are going to be available.

For example, we’ve a group coming tonight who are relying on public transport. Their train gets in around 10.30pm by which time there’s a good chance that the taxis will have made a start on their own vacation. Even if they don’t, then they’re going to be with us all day on the 14th with no transport at all because everything from buses to taxis knocks off for the entire day locally.

Many shops close too. In fact, just about all of them except for the large supermarkets. Still, at least that means that you can get food on the holiday although from the queues at the checkout on Saturday you’d think that the shops were going to be closed for a week or more.

Even some tourist attractions close on public holidays which would be a peculiar thing for them to do but then this is France so it shouldn’t surprise you too much that tourist attractions close on public holidays.

We’ve had two separate groups booking with us recently who seemed to be experiencing senile dementia at a very early age indeed: their 20s!

The first group was Australian so Wendy was quite keen on having them here as she always likes to chat to Australian guests when she gets the chance. We did wonder about them a little early on though as they clearly wanted to be staying at a place on the beach yet had booked our place which is in the countryside although some people do that in the peak season as we’re cheaper. Not only that but although we offer pickups they turned up in a taxi (usually around three or four times the rate we charge). Although they were only here a couple of days they managed to go downhill from there ending up by booking a meal with us for 7.30 and not bothering to sit down to eat it. “More money than sense” is a phrase that definitely applies to them!

The second group was from the UK and couldn’t work out how to get here despite being told in the automatic confirmation that they received when they booked and again on the confirmation e-mail that they received from me the next day. What confused them was that there were no buses to our place at 7pm despite it saying on both e-mails that the last bus is at 6pm. Now, I know that most people don’t read the complete confirmation e-mails but this information was in the second paragraph!

They’re just the first of many similar guests that we expect to receive (or not as in the case of the second group) over the next month or so.

That’s a question that’s even more difficult to answer this year as there’s not only the problem of the exchange rate making everywhere much more expensive but then there’s the oil price which can mean that your holiday increases in price after you’ve booked it.

Throw in the need for a consensus amongst the family as to where you’re going and what you’re doing when you get there and it’s something of a nightmare this year.

And, of course, those holidays are just around the corner and prices are liable to leap since everyone has been putting off booking anything this year…

If you’re like most people I’m sure you’ve hardly gotten beyond thinking that you’ll either get a few hundred from the travel agent or perhaps just use a card when you get there.

In the first case, you’ll end up spending a small fortune un-necessarily and in the second you could be stuck without any money. In both cases, it’s worth putting a little thought into it and to help you make the best choices I’m putting together a little series on it over the next week or so.

Whenever you’ve a peak of bookings, you’re sure to have a peak of cancellations too.

Today for instance is a public holiday here which means, among other things, that the buses aren’t running. So, right on cue, we received a call this afternoon from someone who can’t reach us today. Since the cancellation conditions state that you need to cancel one day in advance, this would normally mean that we’d be billing him for the room tonight but we managed to pick up another booking for his room so he gets off without paying.

As there’s also a bank holiday on Monday, we’re pretty full at the moment and have just found out that the above guest doesn’t have any transport of his own and that a part of four walkers is coming to stay on Saturday night. That leaves us with five people checking out on Sunday who we now know don’t have any transport until Tuesday as there won’t be any buses or taxis on either Sunday or Monday.

I suspect that both lots may want (well, need) to stay another couple of days.