Travel Tips for YOU

Damaged Luggage? just got off a great cruise only to discover your baggage has been damaged...what do you do?? It MUST be documented. You need to see a "Pier Supervisor". He will document your loss so it can be processed. Without his report you will have no standing with the cruiseline. If you are with a partner one of you can do this while one can advise the transfer bus so they know what's going on. DO NOT wait to do this unl you get home. It must be done at the port!

If you discover your damage after you have left...then if you have travel insurance you probably still have recourse with the insurance. Hope you find this helpful. Here are some of my favorite tips. If you have one, please email it to me and I'll post it on my website!

CRUISE AND HOTEL KEY CARDS

CRUISE AND HOTEL KEY CARDS

Ever wonder what is on your magnetic key card?

Answer:

A. Customer's name

B. Customer's partial home address

C. Room number

D. Check-in date and out dates

E. Customer's credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information is
there

for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel
scanner.. An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.

Simply put, Cruise lines and hotels do not erase the information on
these cards until an employee reissues the card to the next hotel guest. At that time, the new guest's information is electronically 'overwritten' on the card and the previous guest's information is erased in the overwriting process.

But until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it usually is kept
in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!

The bottom line is: Keep the cards, take them home with you, or destroy them. NEVER leave them behind in the room or room wastebasket, and NEVER turn them into the front desk when you check out of a room. They will not charge you for the card (it's illegal) and you'll be sure you are not leaving a lot of valuable personal information on it that could be easily lifted off with any simple scanning device card reader.

For the same reason, if you arrive at the airport and discover you still
have the card key in your pocket, do not toss it in an airport trash basket.
Take it home and destroy it by cutting it up, especially through the electronic information strip!

If you have a small magnet, pass it across the magnetic strip several
times. Then try it in the door, it will not work. It erases everything on the card.

Information courtesy of: Metropolitan Police Service.

CRUISE MANAGERS: Past
cruisers know how cluttered cabins can become with schedules, brochures. To
manage the mess, we pack a MAGNETIC REFRIGERATOR CLIP. Most cabin doors are magnetic, we can post our daily schedule in
plain sight so it never get lost in the paper shuffle.

Answer to No-iron
Clothes:

Alot of our clothes get really wrinkled while they
sit patiently in our suitcases. One traveler wrote me her favorite solution to
that problem. She mixes 20 ounces of distilled water with 1 teaspoon of Downy
Fabric softener in a container. Fill a 3 oz. SPRAY bottle with the mixture.
When you let your clothes out of the suitcase, gently mist with the spray bottle.
Lightly tug and smooth the fabric and allow to hang dry. Works great.

Contributed by Linda M.
Brea, CA.

While we are in Europe this
past September we found out the water on at about $4.00 per bottle! We loaded up water and brought it back onto the ship.

Beer: Buying beer on the ship is about $5.00
to $7.00 a bottle. We bought our beer on the mainland at about .40 cents
a bottle. Of course you can't bring that back on the ship, but we still enjoyed
it walking around the ports and drinking our 'cheap' beer.

Wine: Did you know, on Celebrity Cruise Line, you can
bring TWO bottles of Wine onboard the ship at the beginning of your
cruise? Yes, you can. It is two per cabin. Need to bring more onboard the ship?
Have someone else bring it on for you!

If you are using a
passport....copy it and place it in one of your checked in luggage. If you lose
the orginal, at least you will have a copy. This will NOT take a place of the
orginal, but it will help you to get another one much quicker.

If you take a cruise
going and returning to the same port without a passport, (yes you still can do
this) and if you get sick out of the country, YOU CANNOT FLY HOME WITHOUT A
PASSPORT. So dear friends, please just get a passport. It is good for 10 years
for adults and 5 years for children.

Trip protection. Yes many people don't like this. But it can save you a ton of money. An experience from one of our travel magazines.

Purchase trip
insurance to avoid a financial disaster.

"My wife had a client who went on a Caribbean cruise a couple of years ago and had a heart attack and died while in a hospital in St. Thomas. She was 66. My wife knew that the lady was not in good health, and she begged her to take the travel insurance. My wife had me talk with her, and still she insisted that she did not need or want the insurance. As a result of not taking the insurance, her family/estate was out of pocket for well over $100,000. A $150 insurance policy would have solved the money part of the problem and may have gotten her better medical care.

The majority of people traveling on cruises today are stretching it financially to go, even though the cost of a cruise is less than it was 20 years ago. Travelers, for the most part, consider travel insurance an extra expense that they don't need. But we are all humans and never know what may happen to us, whether we are in our living room or far away, so it is better to be prepared and covered. If we return home healthy and uninjured, we should be happy and not begrudge having purchased travel insurance. Most people buy homeowner's insurance, and the house never burns. However, if it does, they are happy to have had the insurance. The same goes for travel insurance.

Most travelers are not travel-savvy and need to know many things that the slick brochures never tell them. Travelers need to know that when they go to another country, the services they receive are usually not up to [the standards 1 to which they are accustomed.

I want my travel agent clients to inform their clients so that their travel experiences meet their expectations. 

Not counting the cost of hospitals, doctors and etc.

I am a travel agent. When I cruise or do a land package, I do buy trip protection
EVEN IF THE CRUISE/TRIP IS FREE. Then I know I am covered as our primary
insurance will NOT cover things like this.

Annie
Maturino

Annie’s
Cruises and Travel