Travel Bits: January 2019

Mixing up the travel bookings.......

I must admit that there are times when I got my travel bookings all mixed up. Thankfully, most of these mixups occur on relatively minor details like the number of days of a hotel stay.

In my most recent trip to Hong Kong just last week, I had booked myself with the wrong hotel, having made the booking just a couple of days before my trip. Perhaps feeling over-confident in myself, I had happily typed the hotel name into my web browser, clicked on the weblink that I believed would direct me to the hotel's booking website, chose the best value accommodation for my period of stay, keyed in my credit card details and double-clicked on that "confirm" button, all without actually checking a second time. It was only when I printed a soft copy of the hotel's email confirmation of my booking that I realised that the said hotel which I had just booked and paid for, is not the one I had wanted to stay in! And to make matters worse, it was located far away from the location of the original hotel which I had intended to stay with during my trip. Quickly checking the terms and conditions of my booking, I realised that because I had chosen the "best rate", there will be no refunds for cancellations or modifications.

This was a relatively small matter for my trip as Hong Kong is a compact city meaning that even though the hotel which I had just booked for myself is located in Causeway Bay instead of Kowloon, the drawback was only an additional 10 to 15 minutes ride in the subway. However the lesson learnt was that one cannot be too over-confident in booking travel details. So what if I already knew the name of the hotel that I wanted to stay in? These days, there are many hotels with similar names. And I was lucky that I still did book with a hotel in the same city that I was travelling to. Imagine having booked myself into a hotel in another city in another country? I would have lost slightly more than a thousand dollars in paid accommodation for a booking which I cannot utilise. And should that happened, I seriously don't think I could or should claim from my travel insurance policy because the fault was well and truly my own.

I had previously also booked air-tickets for the correct flight sectors but on the wrong dates. The fortunate part was that the reputable full-service airline had kindly agreed to waive the associated re-booking fees and penalty charges as I had called them immediately after the booking to relay my request to change the flight dates. My elite membership status with them at that time probably helped a bit in their decision to waive all charges out of goodwill. 

An important note to myself is not to busy myself with other work while I am booking important travel details including flight tickets, hotel accommodation or visa applications in future. And also to double-check all details before clicking on that "submit" or "confirm" button, After all, one cannot be too careful with such stuff, right? :-)

The passport is an extremely important personal document when travelling to another country. Make sure that everything is up to date and valid before even leaving home for the airport.