map-reducedMy Vacation Lady is cleaning up our offices and we’ve been reviewing old blog posts to see what might still be relevant.  This is a blog post from 2011 but believe me, it is still very relevant.

A colleague of mine was doing a presentation for her business group and brought up a great point about how to work best with your travel consultant.

Would you walk into a restaurant, not look at the menu, and just ask the waitress for the cheapest thing on the menu?

If you do, you may not like what she brings you.  Most people will first look through the menu, figure out what few items they might be interested and make a decision on which they want based on:

  1. what they’re in the mood for
  2. how hungry they are
  3. price or if it might be a dinner special with added things like free dessert

Dinner at a restaurant is  much less expensive than a vacation.  If you don’t like what you ordered and want to order something else, you can do that in the same meal.  When planning a vacation, it’s a bit harder to make those kind of last minute changes- especially once you are already on vacation.

We have received emails similar to this on a regular basis:

I was looking around but I’m not sure where will be the best bang for my buck. I was thinking all inclusive would be nice, since we haven’t done that in a while! But its not a necessity. If you could give me some options that would be awesome. As always, thank you for your help!

We’ll need to really find out what you are looking for and what type of vacation would be the RIGHT vacation for you and budget may not be the first question we ask.

Some of the things we need to know are:

  1. When do you want to go and for how long?
  2. Are those dates flexible at all?
  3. Who will you be traveling with?
  4. Where have you been on your last few vacations and what did you like about it?
  5. What did you dislike about your last few vacations?
  6. Are there destinations or type of resorts that you are NOT interested in?
  7. How important are certain resort features  (like a spa, dining options, location of the resort, location or view of your room)?
  8. How important are certain destination features (like a casinos, short or non stop flight from home, night life, culture, shopping, etc)?
  9. What do you like to do on vacation (like relaxing by the pool with a drink in your hand or zip lining, hiking and kayaking, for example)?
  10. What budget are you comfortable with?

So if you are looking for the cheapest vacation you can find, without regard to what you really want to see and do and experience, I can certainly recommend what I would like to do but that really may not be the right vacation for you.

Help us to help you plan your next vacation!  We want it to be the right vacation for you!  My Vacation Lady  has been helping our clients plan their dream vacations and honeymoons since 1994.  We don’t like surprises and the only surprise that we want our guests to have is to realize how easy it was to work with us.

Give us a call and let us plan the right vacation or honeymoon for you!