Picture perfect: Unscrupulous agents could turn your dream holiday into a tourist’s nightmare

It all begins with that colourful advertisement in the newspaper. “Three days/two nights in Singapore at Rs 19,446, or five days/four nights in Singapore and Bangkok for Rs 23,356 per person only!” So you rush to the tour operator who had popped in the ad, hand over the cheque and come back home to busy yourself in the art of packing. In a week’s time, you are on board a flight headed for Thailand, conjuring up heady images of sun-bathed life on the beach.

Ha. The moment you set foot on foreign land, you know you have been had. What you thought was an all-expenses-paid trip sees you paying through your nose for services you thought you’d already paid for when you handed over your “Rs 19,446 only” cheque. Schedules are not met, half of the proposed sightseeing is given a quiet miss, and you don’t get the kind of hotel room you like. Your operator, you realise, has taken you for a long ride.

Everybody knows somebody whose holiday has gone all wrong. But the point to remember is that everybody also knows somebody whose holiday has worked out just the way it was planned. The difference between the whiners and the smug smilers is that the first lot booked with the wrong tour operator.

So, if you are planning your holiday, choose the right agent. And when you have done that, it is wise to thrash out certain issues with your operator before passing on the cheque. Before you put your money in someone else’s hands, make sure that it is going to be spent properly.

To begin with, reputation matters when it comes to picking your operator. “Bigger companies have their reputation at stake,” says Ankur Bhatia, managing director (Indian subcontinent) of online reservation service-providers Amadeus. “So it’s less likely that tourists would be victims of mismanagement while travelling with them.”

Now, going with a bigger tour operator could possibly mean paying marginally more than what you would pay if you opted for a lesser-known agent. But counting pennies could land you in trouble. Moreover, travelling with a smaller operator could mean being off-loaded to a local travel agent once you reach your destination, the latter taking care of your travel thereafter. Sometimes, it works for the better, says Bhatia. At other times, however, the handover may not be all that smooth.

Once the operator has been zeroed in on, there follows a train of smaller details that need to be discussed in detail. Most of the bigger operators explain as much of it as possible to their clients ahead of their trips. Travel service-provider Thomas Cook, for example, makes it clear that its Europe packages do not include porterage charges, that most hotel rooms are not air-conditioned, and that holiday-makers have to pay for using the mini-bar, pay channels and telephones.

Apart from basic inclusions and exclusions, travellers also need to keep an eye on other services, feels Vikram Madhok, managing director of tour operators Abercrombie & Kent. “Meals may not always be included,” he says. “One also needs to have a clear picture of issues such as intra-city transport, costs incurred during sightseeing trips and other hidden costs like visa charges, if they haven’t been mentioned explicitly by the operators.”

One solution to travellers’ problems could be opting for what is called a customised vacation for individual parties. As opposed to off-the-shelf packages offered to clients, the more expensive customised trips are tailored to suit an individual’s or a particular group’s needs. “It offers more opportunities to fine-tune the details related to travel,” says Bhatia. “And since each traveller can be given individual attention on such packages, there are fewer chances of things going wrong, or the trip falling short of the mark.”

Madhok gives you the possible extent to which a trip can be customised. “You could go for a safari in Botsw- ana, and throw in a dirt plane flight along with a 4x4 drive through the grasslands, stay in an eco-friendly forest lodge in pristine surroundings and extend your trip by a day or two, if you want to,” he says.

All said, the final responsibility for a trip perhaps rests with the traveller. Having a clear picture of where you want to go, what you want to do and how you want to do them form the basics of a vacation, the answers to which need to be obtained way before you set out for the airport. Or else, you could be doing in real life what the Groswold family have been doing for years on the silver screen. Remember the National Lampoon series?