Become a Home Based Travel Agent

Memories of Booking Blunders
By: Joanie Ogg, CTC, MCC

Can making a mistake really be a good thing? You bet it can, because the beauty of it all is the valuable lessons we learn when we do make a mistake selling travel. A couple nights ago I had a sleepless night and found my mind wandering and for some odd reason, I was recalling mistakes I have made over the years selling travel. I suspect it would have been a nightmare had I been asleep, but since I was wide-awake I actually found myself smiling at the memories. I certainly was not smiling back when I made those mistakes!

How many of you can relate to this feeling?  You are in your car driving along on your merry way and you look in your review mirror to see a police car with the lights on behind you. That sudden sinking feeling or moment of panic is one we have all probably felt at one time or another. I liken that horrid sensation to the same one I have felt during my travel career when the realization that I made a mistake with a client's travel plans.

A few months on www.HBTACommunity.com, the popular social network that Tom and I operate for professional travel agents internationally, a discussion took place where agents in the community shared some of their stories of mistakes made and lessons learned. I found it both enlightening and entertaining. I am sure all of us can relate to the stories, but more important is how those agents handled these mistakes. Each of them took it upon themselves to accept responsibility for the errors and satisfied the clients. It is a hard to swallow a mistake made that costs money and yet we all know it is the right thing to do. Not the easy thing to do by any means, but the right action to take.  It seemed that in most of the stories shared the clients were not only satisfied with the final result and efforts made by the agents, but also chose to remain faithful clients.

Here are just few stories to share with you about mistakes I have made over the years and the valuable lessons learned. Perhaps some of these will sound familiar to you and bring back some memories, be they good or bad ones.

Tom and I opened a retail storefront agency in the early 1980’s in La Jolla, California. No surprise knowing us that it was only a block from a terrific surf spot called Windansea. The agency was appropriately named Windansea Travel. We have some great memories from our days operating the agency and the wholesale tour company we operated selling Hawaii FIT packages. Hawaii was our specialty and we developed a strong repeat clientele based on our expertise in the destination.

My story is not about any mistake I made with regards to the planning of the clients dream trip, but instead it a simple story of not using any type of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Mind you, this is the early 80’s so computer based CRM’s were not even close to being a reality back then. Instead, we used the old-fashioned manual system of keeping track of the clients information on large index cards in a make shift Rolodex file system.  I know I am dating myself here and I am hoping some of you can remember and relate. For those of you who are fortunate to have only learned the technological version of CRM’s, you can feel lucky.

Back to the story…

A gentleman (Mr. Jones), made reservations with me by phone for a beautiful seven night trip staying at the wonderful Kahala Hilton on Oahu. He was a new client to our agency and this was his first trip using our services. He spared no expense and booked what was referred to as the Presidential Suite. He wanted to fly First Class roundtrip from San Diego to Honolulu. The reservation was to be for Mr. and Mrs. Jones. This potential revenue we were going to make on this reservation was great.

I say potential because the revenue never made it to the bank. This man never did travel with us and I still fill lucky today that he did not choose to sue me for my blunder. You are probably speculating by now on what I could have done wrong. Well, if you guessed that Mrs. Jones was not in fact the wife of Mr. Jones, you would be correct. Mr. Jones had always communicated with me by phone and he had initiated most of the communications. However, on that dreadful day back in 1983 I made the call and guess who I called?  Yes, I called the REAL Mrs. Jones (his wife then but I am not sure if it lasted after my call) at her home to let her know her documents were ready and would she like to come in with Mr. Jones to go over everything in preparation for her terrific trip to the Kahala Hilton. Need I say more?

My horrible blunder was that I called his home number instead of his office number. I admit fully that I was in error by calling the home number. He had NOT provided that to me, I had looked it up in the phonebook when he had not returned two calls made to his office number. I just ASSumed that his wife would be thrilled to know they were ready and well, you can assume now what happened next. 

The real Mrs. Jones was surprised to find that she was going to Hawaii and she was thrilled! About an hour later, Mr. Jones called to cancel the reservations and read me the riot act. In those days one traveled without proving identification and can only guess how common trips like this might have been years ago. However wrong he was to be planning his clandestine trip to Hawaii, it was still my judgment error calling a number that I had not been given. I never had to pay any money to Mr. Jones out of my pocket since he simply cancelled and there were no cancellation fees at that point. I did learn a tremendous lesson and one that still haunts me to this day. He did not sue me but I worried about that possibility for years.

I know this has been a long read, but I hope you enjoyed it and perhaps it made some of your mistakes selling travel seem miniscule in comparison. I highly recommend you join us at www.HBTACommunity.com and search for discussions entitled “mistakes and / or errors” for some more great stories from your peers.