When push comes to love
I have spent a lot of time this week dealing with a client who was grappling with feelings of violence towards her fiance’s ex-wife. “I swear I could murder her,” she exclaimed. Since the ex-wife also threatened to put a spanner in the works of a decent booking, I volunteered to hold my client’s coat while she performed the deed.
When the client approached me with her request, I suggested and costed a detailed itinerary for the happy couple, involving lots of excursions throughout Singapore and Malaysia to ensure the happy couple didn’t waste a minute’s time seeing the sights.
Bridget at Premier Asia was charged with the unenviable task of making certain that there were enough hours in the day to fit in all the assorted trips. The flights had to be organised for the afternoon so the clients could visit the caves, the bird park and the orang-utan sanctuary in the mornings and so on.
The schedule was about as tight as it could be with no room to manoeuvre – and if one element was altered – the whole thing would have to be scrapped.
The client had been enormously enthusiastic about the prospect of her honeymoon, and had insisted that she and her new husband would not want to miss anything. In fact, when I suggested they miss the night safari in Singapore and spend only one night in a longhouse in Sarawak, she looked distraught.
Bridget rang back within an hour with the costing – I had expected it to take much longer as it had certainly taken me an age to sort out the itinerary – and I was able to phone the client to give her the good news.She was thrilled that everything had fallen into place and that she would see everything she had set her heart on. She promised to call me back or pop in the next day when she had spoken to the lucky bridegroom.
As the close of business approached the next day, Ihad still not heard from the bride to be and feeling a bit uneasy about the situation, I rang her myself and immediately deduced from the tone of her voice all was not well.
She told me her partner’s ex-wife had not signed the decree nisi. My client has in turn interpreted this as a deliberate act to completely sabotage her fiance’s wedding. “We won’t be able to get married now, so the honeymoon won’t be happening,” she said despondently.
I chirpily suggested they still go ahead with the holiday – subtly substituting the word honeymoon with holiday – and get married later, but, understandably, she was in no mood for compromise. Bridget and I are on hold with this booking until the ex-wife relents and puts pen to paper.
Lay down, Sally
Our Sal has great legs, but, having just returned from her trip to Norway with Scandinavian Travel Service, she has just discovered that they’re not sea legs.
She swears she took the tablets, but for two of the three days she wasn’t quite herself. Thankfully, it was all hands on deck and Hayley from the Passenger Shipping Association Retail Agents Scheme and Barry from STS took care of her. She missed the night in the Irish bar but did manage to gain her certificate for reaching the Arctic Circle, which, given how she was feeling, was a Titanic feat!
Gym’ll fix it for you
With more and more clients becoming fitter and more health conscious, we need better descriptions of hotel gyms!
My client, a professional sportsman, wanted a detailed list of the equipment available to him in a gym in a San Francisco hotel. He wanted to know which elements would be mechanical and whether or not there would be any free weights.
Thankfully I did not embarrass myself by saying that all the equipment in the hotel gym was free and already included in the cost, by realising just in time that the client was referring to the non-mechanical weights, i.e. dumbbells. You can no doubt guess that this sports spectator is definitely an infrequent visitor to the gym!
This put me in mind of a balletic client who asked me whether her hotel could offer her a barre at which to practice. I looked at her twice; what was she some kind of Olympic spirit drinker? Before I had the chance to show my ignorance, she was kind enough to explain that she meant a wall barre to use for dance exercises. Phew!
Offering a dis-Crete service
Call me old fashioned but I still like to hear a human voice at the end of a telephone, and when that voice is a highly informed one, I like it all the more.
You can imagine then, how pleased I was when I rang Argo holidays for some information on a couple of hotels in Crete and got the managing director herself, Matilde Robert.
It’s a long time since I visited Crete and I did not feel I could answer my client’s questions fully. I believe that in situations like these, it is always better to explain to a client that I don’t know the answer, but I know a man/woman who does, than offer out of date information.
My client had been due to travel to Croatia with another operator but the trip had been cancelled and she was looking for an alternative.
It seemed straightforward until she complicated matters by asking for a daytime flight departing from Birmingham and arriving on the same day, at the same time as the Gatwick flight.
She then went on to ask about evening entertainment in and around the hotels, which was important to her, though not to her travelling companion, and the sort of mix of clientele to expect in terms of age and so on.
Happily for me, Matilde was able to offer her expert knowledge on the situation whilst I was left thinking up a possible solution to the potential entertainment problem; if the client’s friend went to bed earlier than her, wouldn’t that solve it? I suppose life’s not that simple.
n Maureen Hill works at Wessex World Travel, Gillingham, Dorset