As some of you may know, last month, My Vacation Lady was invited to participate in the Romance Travel Forum in Punta Cana and we needed to find a good way to call and text to family back in the US as well as to be in communication with our colleagues who were spread out all over the resort in Punta Cana.

We had some decisions to make:

  • did we want to take an international calling plan?  I could have taken an international day pass plan that would give me unlimited talk or text for $10 per day.
  • did we want to take an international text plan? I could also have paid $0.50 per text or $1.30 for picture and video texts, if I paid as I went.

Since our assistant was in the office to handle any emergencies or calls that came up during the conference, we decided not to go with an international calling or text plan and decided to try out some of the online apps for texting and calling.

Which ones worked well for us?

  1. Facebook Messenger- as long as we had WiFi, we were good to go for sending messages/texts.
  2. WhatsApp- this was what we used with great success to call home.  When WiFi was spotty, calls dropped regularly but when the service was consistent, we were able to talk, text or video chat all for free.

There are other apps that many of my colleagues and friends have suggested, like Viber, but we found that WhatsApp worked better for us from Punta Cana back to the US and the reverse.  We were also able to make calls within Punta Cana.   The calls were clearer and we found it worked well (even with some of who were a bit more technologically challenged)

While we really do suggest that our clients try to unplug when on vacation, this was a work trip for us so we didn’t have the luxury of shutting off the phone and putting it in the safe.

My Vacation Lady  is always on the search for ways to make our client’s vacations and honeymoons more seamless and stress free.  We post travel tips every Tuesday on our Facebook page so follow us for lots of useful tips and ideas.