Mistaken mayhem
School days… the best days of your life? Maybe not, but there were benefits. Woven name tapes inside my uniform meant that I never lost a blazer, a sock or a pair of giant PE knickers (more’s the pity). If only we still sewed our names into our clothes – all sorts of mayhem would be avoided.
If you’re sceptical, consider the recent goings-on at the Elite Conference in Lanzarote, where Atlantic Holidays sales and marketing manager Dino Toouli spent a happy evening with colleagues in the jazz club and left in the early hours, slipping into his dinner jacket on the way out.
Some time later he received a text message from Tony Byrne of Tourama informing him that Tony had his DJ. Dino realised that he was wearing Rupert Diggins of Holiday Options’ jacket.
Quite how he hadn’t noticed this before must be testimony to a good evening, as Rupert is over 6ft tall and Dino is about 5ft 7in.
Knowing that he was booked on an earlier flight than Rupert the next day, Dino texted Rupert to tell him he had his jacket and would leave it at reception for him to collect.
If this sounds like ‘Carry On Conferencing’, the plot only thickens. The next morning Dino had boarded the coach and was on his way to the airport before it dawned on him that he didn’t have his passport. The coach stopped, turned round and deposited Dino back at the hotel where he searched desperately for it with no luck.
Unable to fly, he contacted the British Consulate, which advised him he’d need two new photos, a police report and a confirmed return ticket for a new flight before it could issue an emergency passport.
A visit to the interpreter and a photo booth later, he returned to the hotel where staff told him they had found his passport. He went straight online to book a flight back at a cost of £300.
Finally at the airport with return ticket and passport, Dino encountered Rupert with Andrea Robinson and Bev Platt from Training for Travel. Rupert asked if Dino had his jacket, to which Dino replied that he had texted Rupert to tell him that he’d left it at the hotel reception. Rupert explained that his mobile phone was in the jacket therefore had not received the crucial information, which was why he’d spent all day looking for it.
I remain unsure as to whether the men involved have been successfully reunited with their clothing and other effects, but am reassured to know that their friendship, at least, remains intact.
At the same conference, another drama had unfolded around Elite board member Pat Waterton of Langley Travel, who sustained an injury in the bathroom of her hotel suite. Having got up early one morning to rehearse the speech she was due to deliver later in the day, she slipped in the shower and badly hurt her ankle.
Knowing that her colleagues would all still be sound asleep, she bravely put on her make-up and waited until a more godly hour to alert someone to her plight. And it was to her business development manager that she turned in her hour of need. He told her not to worry about her speech as they could send up a film crew to record it before she set off for the hospital.
This, Pat decided, was not an option. It felt too much like the Queen recording her Christmas Day speech for the nation: impersonal and stilted and, besides, she was in pain.
In the event, Pat’s injury was serious enough for her to require a plaster cast and a wheelchair for the rest of the conference. She tells me that she didn’t dare have a drink after that, for fear of being caught drunk in charge of a set of wheels.
My embarrassing secret
Mobile Trails director of sales, marketing and distribution Neil Herbert told me this week about the brilliant Travel Buddy service it offers.
Described as a ‘unique, interactive travel guide on your mobile phone’ this is a destination content service delivered to your mobile for a small subscription fee.
As well as providing information and answering clients’ questions, agents and operators can use the service to communicate itinerary changes or crisis situations of the sort that arose following XL’s collapse.
I enthused, I raved and I admired. How do I tell Neil that I still haven’t mastered the art of texting?
Maureen Hill works at Travel Angels, Gillingham, Dorset