Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a Lifeless Ordinary, the travel show and podcasts
from your friends at the wishing Well two forty three
f Avenue in Harsmer and online at the wishing Well
dot biz. The wishing Well is your ultimate luxury concierge,
travel agency and A Lifeless Ordinary is a travel show
and podcast hosted by Terry Dean, bringing her over forty
years of experience in the travel industry to help guide
(00:21):
you to great experiences in your travel, whether it be
around the block, around the country, or around the world.
Let's bring in Terry Dean and say hello, Actually I
should say Harry. Hello, Harry. How are you doing this week? Hey, Chris, Hello,
It's good to see I. Oh gosh, it's been a
couple of weeks since you and I have gotten to
sit down and talk travel. Last episode that we did,
(00:42):
we were talking about all those questions people are afraid
to ask their travel agent, and you have all the answers.
So we're gonna do that again this week. Before we
get into that, though, I know, we've got some travel
news to get caught up on.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
All right, Yeah, I guess the biggest thing to get
caught up on, Chris, is that Universal Orlando celebrate a
grand opening of their brand new theme park, Epic Universe.
This just a week or so ago at the twenty
first of May, and this was a big, big deal.
Mark Woodbury, the chairman of CEO of Universal's Destinations and Experience, says,
(01:17):
this moment marks a significant milestone in our company's journey
to redefine the theme park experience for our global audience
and for generations of families to come. Universal has kind
of been they also ran down in the Orlando area,
But I think they're really upping the game with this
new theme park. You've got Super Nintendo World, You've got
(01:40):
Dark Universe, You've got the Wizarding World of Harry Potter,
the Ministry of Magic, You've got How to Train Your Dragon,
the Mythical Isle of Burke. So much like their competitors
on the other side of town, they've got several theme parks,
and I think this is really stepping up the game.
So what we've done in Orlando is we now transfer
formed it from a place that people went to see
(02:02):
Disney to a place where people are going to go
to see everything in Orlando. This new Universal Studios is
now its own one week long destination. Think about that. Yeah,
and think about it.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
If you're going with your kids, you can have a
two week vacation at all the theme parks.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And I haven't even even touched on SeaWorld or all
the other things you can do in Orlando. But one
of the things I expect to see over time is
that families are going to pick and choose from amongst
the Disney properties, from amongst the Universal properties, and go
to see particular things at each park. And the great
(02:39):
part is you've got hotels there that are ready to
accommodate that kind of park hopping atmosphere. I think it's
a great thing for travelers. We've got two incredibly immersive, intense, interactive,
technologically over the top parks.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I think when you look at the investment that you
make as a family to head down to Orlando, whether
you're going to Disney or Universe or sea World, it's
nice to have those options. It's nice not to feel
like I have to go see everything in Disney because
I bought tickets to Disney. I might want to see
a little bit of everything in all the land of Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
So I think this is a great thing for tourism.
I think it's a great thing for the Orlando area,
and I think it's a great thing for families too,
because they can pick and choose.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I went to Orlando. Oh gosh, it's been twenty almost
twenty five years ago, and I don't even know if
it's still there. It was a section of Disney that
you could get into for free, and it looks sort
of like Amazing Street. Yeah that's the main street. That's
the shopping area. Yeah, you were able to go to
the shops and some restaurants and everything. I had the
(03:45):
best vacation Orlando. We did the free Disney Street. Is
that Main Street USA or something, I don't know what
it's called. It's happening down there. And then Disney Downtown
and yeah, that's what it was. And then put put golf.
We went pup, punt goff like every day we were there.
It was to me, that was like the best vacation ever.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Well, I think that's the thing I'm talking about now.
Orlando has something for everybody. You can putt putt golf,
you can see Harry Potter, you can see the Magic Kingdom.
Whatever you want to do, you'll be able to do
it right there in Orlando. If I go at this
point would be for the roller coasters. I want to
ride real fast, jerking you around, spinning upside down kind
(04:27):
of roller coasters. So the other thing that we're seeing
in the news is I've read a survey and it's
looking ahead at some of the events coming up. We're
in twenty five, but in twenty twenty six, we're already
hearing interest in FIFA for the World Cup, America's two
hundred and fiftieth anniversary, the twenty twenty eight Summer Olympics
are going to be driving tourism. So we're looking ahead,
(04:49):
travel advisors, we're looking at all the international travel that's
coming up, and we're really excited about that. We see
a lot of goings on in what we call land tours,
is families that are going to come to a location
and spend time doing the particular event that's going on there,
plus they want to go see everything that's near that city.
(05:10):
So that's another big thing in the news. The travel
agents are seeing that. If we're seeing that, it's because
the traveling public is starting to ask us about that.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
You mentioned Summer Olympics to the Winter Olympics drive tourism.
Summer Olympics seem to be more popular Winter Olympics. I
like to watch them on TV, so for obvious reasons.
So yeah, you're going to see a lot with that.
And then the other big thing in the news, and
this goes back to my roots. You know, I'm a
Detroit boy, right, So one of my very own Diana Ross,
(05:44):
has been named godmother of the second Icon class ship.
The Star of the seas Oral Caribbean has named Diana
Ross the godmother. So she's going to welcome the ship
to the fleet this August. So stay tuned if you're
a Supremes fan, if you're a Diana Ross fan. I
think the trend says all these cruise lines are bringing
(06:08):
in the celebs to help make these cruise ships a
little more popular. And one of the things I've read
that's going to be happening is they are allegedly they
have a production of Back to the Future that's going
to be on that ship. I would love to see that.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I think that's fantastic. The other thing that we're seeing
this in the news, and I'm just looking at trends
this morning, sharing with you Chris Expedition cruising something you
and Terry laugh at me. When I say I'm interested
in that expedition cruising, Harry was right.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Everybody listening, Harry was right. Wait wait wait, wait, wait,
go ahead, and let's hear the story before we make
the declaration that Harry was right.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Well, the story is that travel advisers are seeing more
and more interest in expedition cruising, and unsurprisingly, interest is
driven by the destination. Eighty percent of US advisors. We
agreed that that's the key motivator for booking an expedition
cruise is to get that bucket list experience, you know,
off the books and onto your memories and experience chart
(07:14):
the number one top choice. Not surprisingly, have I talked
about Antarctica.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I was going to ask a Antarctica.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Antarctica is it followed by the Galapagos and then ice
in Greenland.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
I'd like to go to any of those places. Well, good,
except for Antarctica for the same reason you don't want
to go to the Winter Olympics. But other than that,
I'm on board. So yeah, all right, you're a travel expert,
so we'll let you have that. When you were right,
all right, Harry was right.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
I can hear Terry now she said, don't give in
to him so easily.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
So I mentioned at the top of our show that
the last episode we did of a Lifeless Ordinary, we
answered our listeners questions. We get a lot of questions
from our listeners. Oh yeah, we appreciate your emails and
your calls. If you want to uh call the Wishing Well,
it's easy is call them at five four h nine
oh eight twenty three thirty three. You could stop it
(08:07):
in person and ask questions. They'd love to answer your questions,
and we do that all day long. Yeah, and they're
looking on nef Avenue in Harrisonburg and they're online at
the wishing Well dop biz. You can find the contact
page there. You can send your questions to either Harry
or Terry and they'll get an answer for you. But
right now we're going to answer a lot of those questions.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, this set off the I mean, it just set
off a firestorm of questions, and that's why I wrote
some of them down. We're going to go through some
of them this morning, but people email them to us. Also,
if you want to email, you can use infull at
the wishing Well dot biz or if you like Terry better,
Terry at the Wishing Weld o biz or on the
slim chance you like me better, Harry at the Wishing
(08:46):
Weld out buz. Either way, we'll get those questions and
we'll keep bringing them forward and trying to give you answers.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
So we're going to take a quick break. When we
come back, we'll start answering more of your questions here
on a Life Less Ordinary? Who would think of driving
off to a new destination with guidance from Google or
Syria at the Wishing Weld guide your next travel experience.
Travel the world as you enjoy the very best destinations
and all they offer at the best prices. Our mobile
travel app keeps your vacation on track and keeps you
(09:13):
connected with our team of experts for help if you
need it, call us at five four zero nine.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Zero eight two three three.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Three stop buy two forty three nef Avenue or visit
us at the Wishingwell dot biz and welcome back to
a Life Less Ordinary, the travel show and podcast from
your friends at the Wishing Well. They're located as we
just mentioned, on nep Avenue in Harrisonburg. You can also
find them online at the Wishingwell dot biz or give
him a call. They'd love to talk to you even today.
(09:41):
You can give them a call. Five four oh nine
oh eight, twenty three thirty three, and we're here with
Harry Rife from The Wishing Well and Harry, you're a
travel expert. So they say, so, you say that sounded mean.
I should have said it that way, Harry. Now you
don't have mean bon in you, Chris, let's start. Let's
(10:03):
start with the questions and get away from me. Why
should I use a travel advisor instead of booking online myself?
I've asked that question when I first started hosting the show,
and I look forward to hearing what you have to
say about that.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, and I think this is probably one of the
most popular or often heard questions we get, and because
the reason for that is because people can book a
number of ways. A lot of people book online, a
lot of people rely on their friend, a lot of
people rely on someone that's been to the place they
want to go five years ago. All of those are,
(10:38):
you know, reasonable possibilities. But booking well, booking online might
seem easy, but it's kind of like, I guess the
NLG I would use. It's like building a house, Chris,
I've built a couple of houses, and they are not easy. Uh,
You've got to have a house that has a blueprint,
has a plan, and you have to have the expertise
(11:00):
to know how to read that blueprint, to know what
to look for, to know where the pitfalls are.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And when you work with a travel advisor, what you're
doing is you're bringing on an experienced builder if you're
building a house, but you bring on somebody who's gone
through this time and time again, probably as recently as
that morning or the night before. So the experience, the
expertise that you're getting is just incredible, let's say professional guidance.
(11:28):
You also get exclusive perks at the wishing Well. One
of the things you and Terry and I talk about
all the time is our affiliation with Virtuoso. Virtuoso is
such a valuable tool for us. It helps as we
do travel planning, but it also helps because Virtuoso puts
some things out there for our travelers. They get benefits
(11:51):
that they don't necessarily even think about or certainly pay
for that comes for free. So you get these perks
in the most important thing. I've never ever been on
the internet, gotten flustered, frustrated, and found an easy to
call phone number for someone to give me an answer.
(12:12):
And that's the truth. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
And have you ever hit the button and wished you
hadn't hit the purchase button, you hit some other button
and then you think about a question afterwards.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I you know, I just had that happen to me.
A couple of weeks ago. I purchased something and as
I hit the submit button, I see the message at
the top of the screen that says, if you're purchasing
over seventy nine dollars, shipping is free. Yeah, and I'd
already hit submit on it. YEP. I did reach out
to them, and it was so hard to find their
contact information. They refunded my shipping, but it wasn't easy
(12:45):
to figure out how to get that money back. Well.
Their whole business model is built on They spend their
resources on advertising, Google, advertising, placement, all the things that
get you to them, which is great. It's a small
our business strategy. The business strategy at the Wishing Well
is we don't spend money on that. When people get
(13:07):
to us. Instead of getting our money spent on advertising,
they get the money spent on having somebody that can
answer all the questions. So I think about how many
things in our life have disappeared because it has become
easy enough for people to do it on their own
(13:28):
instead of having to pay an expert.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And sometimes they aren't easy to do on your own.
Have you been to the self checkout line in the
supermarket lately?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
You do it on your own? And how much extra
time does it take? How much hassle does it take?
And how much do you get paid for doing that
cashiering job and bagging? I'm sure there's a discount building somewhere.
I'm thinking like the DIY attitude. It's like I'm thinking
about graphic artists. Everybody has photoshop or access to something
(13:57):
or AI. Now that'll do it for you. In this mindset,
I'm smart, I'm talented. I can do this myself. You
can until you realize that you're in over your head.
And that's why I think travel experts are so important.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, well, that's where you know that expert knowledge and
a personalized service I think is the big advantage. You know,
to answer your question, what's the advantage? You get expert knowledge,
you get personalized services, you get that deep dive into destinations.
We have been to many of the destinations that people
want to go to. If not, we know people that have,
and we can use our network of travel agents to
(14:33):
find information from somebody who's personally been there. We can
ask about that destination, what are the hidden gems, what
are the ethnic experiences, what are the best places to visit?
And part of our job also, just like if you
go to a custom tailor, there'll tailor that clothing for you,
we're going to tailor your vacation experience for you. It's
(14:54):
great if you can find something that mostly fits, but
it's tough to have to live with some something that
mostly fits. What if you get something that mostly fits
and you can do a little bit of tweaking and
tailoring to make it a perfect fit or a near
perfect fit. That's what we do, and we do that
by going through that process of interviewing you. When people
(15:14):
come in and ask me about planning a vacation, they say,
what do you think I should do?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
I don't know you.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
I don't know what your favorite shows are, I don't
know what your favorite leisure activities are. I don't know
what the favorite places you visited are. I don't know,
I don't know, I don't know. My job is to
ask you those questions to pull those answers out of you,
almost like an interview. And Terry and you have talked
about that on this podcast before, on the show before.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
She's trying to understand you and what you want, what
your family wants, so that we can recommend a vacation
that fits those kind of needs, not Terry and Harry's needs.
And also when you talk about family, if you're booking
for a lot of if you're doing that on your own,
(16:02):
and all of a sudden you've got somebody in the
family going but I don't want to do that, and
now you're trying to figure out how to how are
you going to make this an enjoyable vacation. You have
answers for those kind of objections. You can find the
happy middle ground and go, you know what I have
exactly what you can do while the rest of the
family is scuba diving.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Actually, this morning, as we're speaking, okay, I have a
family that's arriving in Europe. They are arriving from three
different destinations in the United States to enjoy the same
week long luxury cruise. The logistics of getting them there,
getting them to their pre trip hotel so they can
(16:41):
spend a night and kind of, you know, say hello
to each other they haven't seen each other for a
little while, and get ready for that cruise the next morning,
get all the transportation coordinated to get them to the
hotel the next morning. Different set of transportation because now
there's more of them. They're going on their cruise, and
at the end of the crews we have the same
thing in reverse because they're going to be dispersing to
(17:05):
different locations back in the United States. And when you
talk about doing that, you hear in the news issues
with airlines, airports, all those things. Our job at the
Wishing Well is to stay on top of that, watch
those flights, work with the transportation providers, work with the
airlines to make sure that everybody arrives together, and everybody
(17:27):
leads together, and they start from their destination and they
end up at their destination at home when this trip
is done. So the more complex that trip is, the
more value you get from that travel professional and probably
the best value. You know what we charge for our
professional services.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Cherry told me it's nothing, and I told her I
didn't believe her.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
She's right, it's nothing. There's very very few things are
next to nothing. Very very few things we charge for,
and it's because we have the expertise, we have the tools,
so we can make them happen without having to expend
a lot of effort, Chris. We know what to do
and how to do it, so it's just kind of natural,
rather than somebody who's put something online is going to
(18:13):
spend three hours figuring out how to put all the
pieces in parts together to make something happen. If we
had to do that, we would have to charge you.
But we don't have to do that. So that's the
best thing. We talk about. Visas also today, visas I've heard,
you know on the broadcast, we've talked about visas, different
(18:34):
visas for different countries, different procedures for entering and exiting
different countries. Those are things that we stay on top of.
I referenced a website of one of the major airlines
this week and they said, you don't need a visa
to pass through this country's airport. I'm not going to
call out who they were, but then I said, that
(18:55):
doesn't sound right. I've heard some chattered a little bit differently.
So I called somebody that I know is at that
airline and I said what are you telling people? And
he said, I'd tell my travelers, get this visa. It's
twenty dollars and it can mean the difference between you
being delayed in an airport transfer onto your final destination,
or not delayed.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
He said.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
The government's kind of being, you know, a little bit
sketchy about how they're doing things and what they're doing.
Buy this visa for twenty bucks. It's the cheapest insurance
you can get. Guess what I recommended to my travelers,
Get the visa. Get the visa. You got it, Harry.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
One of the other things that we get asked a
lot is I'm spending so much time on this. It
is so stressful, pulling your hair out trying to figure
out did I get the right thing? Am I is
there going to be a plane to when I land?
You know? Am I going to be stuck in whatever
my layover? You know? Situation. How do you help with
(19:52):
alleviating all those time and stress issues that go into travel. Yeah,
that's a great question. Will we do it?
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Because we have experience and when we do the research
and planning, we know the right questions to ask. So
when a listener is planning an individual trip, they're going
to think about all these things eventually, or the people
in their family that are traveling with them are going
to think about it too. But the research and planning,
it's a really time consuming effort, and most people like
(20:19):
to have some value on their time. I mean, you
can sleep, you can go out to dinner, you can
do other things, or you can research and plan a trip.
It's great to do some of that, but then hand
that over to the travel agent to do the parts
that we do best, especially when it comes to a
complex itinerary, because we can compare options, we can manage
the booking process. We can make sure that that booking
(20:42):
process is carefully threaded together so that all the pieces
fit in the end. Worst thing you can do is
get to an airport and leave from that city. But
you're leaving from a different airport. But forgot to figure
out how you're going to get from one side of
New York to the other side of New York. You
got a family, you know of four or five, so
(21:02):
you've got kids, and you've got bags and stuff. You're
coming into one New York airport, you're leaving from another.
It's tough to get across town, especially if you're arriving
during rush hour, especially if you haven't thought about how
you're going to do that. Those are the things that
for us are very very easy. We can streamline that process.
We put all of the lo gistical details together. We
(21:24):
look at the options when you book a flight. Do
you know you can fly in the same airplane and
you might be flying on a United flight or a
Luftanza flight, or you might be flying on an Air
France flight that's code shared with another airline, And if
you look at those things, you may price those flights differently.
So immediately we know we can save you money by
(21:45):
looking for who's going on that route for the cheapest
price rather than I'm going to fly in United. You
get your United miles either way, so it's not a
big difference. But if we can save you a couple
hundred dollars, why not in the best thing I think
in all of what you're talking about is that peace
of mind knowing that somebody who knows what they're doing
(22:07):
has looked at it and kind of given it the
blessing to say, yep, this is correct. You can put
your fine touches in there. But if we look at
it we'll look at it and make sure everything fits
seamlessly and smoothly together, and say, Chris, what a great
job you've done planning. We've helped iron out these things
like you forgot this, or you forgot this, or you
(22:29):
forgot that. But now it's looking great. You can take
it home, tell your family you've done it. Harry, I
like this question. I've heard that if I use a
travel professional, they've got exclusive deals and perks for me.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Is that true? It's absolutely true. Of Virtuoso is the
biggest one that you hear us talk about. Automatically, when
you book certain things with the Wishing Well, you get
these Virtuoso perks automatically added to your reservation. It could
be something simple like a two hundred dollars cabin credit
on a crew per person. It could be an upgrade
(23:03):
at a hotel to the best available room in that hotel.
It could be something you know, simple like transfers. Some
of our properties will pick you up at the airport
and transfer you in a limousine to their property. That's
nice kinds of perks. Besides that, we have industry connections
also outside of virtual so where we know people at
(23:25):
properties and we can call those people and say, my
great friend Chris is coming with his family. You know,
his daughters celebrate on a birthday and we want to
do something special form They say, no problem, we have
those kinds of you know, connections with the concierge, so
room upgrades meals. That's another big one. If you go
(23:46):
to Europe, most hotels do not provide free breakfast like
you see a lot of places in the United States.
Our hotels, because of the virtual also connection and because
of the affiliations that we have, we will get a
free breakfast. We've just put fifty dollars in your pocket, okay,
every time. And the big one is the perks that
(24:09):
we get is when something goes wrong, we have people,
we have phone numbers that are not public, you can't
find them on Google, that we can call and get
things straightened out. And that's that's magic when you're in trouble.
I love having an advocate. Yes, I already know the
answer to this question, but I still I think it's
(24:30):
a question that needs addressed. Is travel insurance really worth it?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Oh my goodness, yes, now more than ever, especially since COVID,
Especially since COVID, there's so many things that can interrupt travel,
and I think COVID was something that gave people, you know,
a lot of pause because travel was what came to
a full stop. But travel insurance is so essential nowadays,
(24:56):
especially if you're traveling with a family, especially if you're
traveling outside of the country. People say, oh, yeah, I'm retired,
and my bucket list says, I'm going to go visit
all of these places. I'm on Medicare. Medicare is fantastic.
It's a tremendous health insurance policy. It works great in
(25:16):
the United States. When I'm out of the country, I
have travel insurance because the deductibles on Medicare and on
many insurance policies outside of the United States, you are
what they call out of network. Everyone's got networks now
for their insurance. Sounds like an exclusive country club. It's terrible.
(25:36):
It's not an exclusive at all. What it means is
if you're not in a network, you're going to be
paying through the nose. So travel insurance is important. If
you can't afford to lose that trip investment, you should invest.
Travel insurance typically costs about ten percent of the cost
of your trip. But if somebody gets sick, before the trip,
(25:58):
if somebody gets sick or injured during the trip, of
something unexpected happens, your bags don't make it, your flights
don't make it. All these possible things can happen. Travel
insurance is there, and that's the lever to make things
right for you, Chris, And don't look at travel insurance
as that ten percent add on. Look at it as
(26:18):
just part of the cost of your vacation.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Peace of mind, piece of mind.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Would you get in your car and drive down the
road sixty miles an hour without travel insurance?
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Sure, but I wouldn't do it without car insurance. Yeah,
without car insurance. Yeah? All right, So I like this
one too. We see a lot of prices online, A
lot of prices get thrown around from the online travel websites.
Is it cheaper to book though through a travel advisor?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
No, I wouldn't say it's cheaper to book through a
travel advisor, but more often than not, as a matter
of fact, almost all the time, we can match anything
that's online. But what we can also do is let
you know why what you saw online may not be.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
What you want. Maybe the question should be worded, is
it more affordable, a better option? To use a travel agent.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
It is because I've had people come in and they've said,
you know, Harry, you coded me this price on a trip.
And this part of it was the flight going from
here to I don't know, Las Vegas for you know,
a weekend. I want to spend a week in Las Vegas.
And they said, I've come back and I've found a
price that's you know, it's one hundred and fifty dollars
less for a ticket than what you gave me. I said, yeah,
(27:31):
I said, are you planning to carry anything with you
onto the plane? That is what they call basic economy.
That means that you can't carry anything on the plane. Well,
I wasn't going to check my luggage. Well you are now,
because that fear doesn't allow you to carry your luggage
onto the plane.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I didn't know that was.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Fear doesn't allow you to pre select a seat, so
you might not be sitting with your your honey or
your sweetheart, or your buddy or whoever you plan to
sit with. You also are the first one if that
flight gets so overbooked, then they can't convince someone to,
you know, to give up their ce. You are the
first one with the privilege of giving up yours because
you are the least amount of revenue on that flight
(28:12):
for the airline. So do you really want basic economy?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
No? Yeah, you don't. I want everything I can get
for my dollar. Yeah, all right, Erry. I love these questions.
I love your answers. We're going to dig into some
more listener questions here on a Life Less Ordinay, we'll
be back in a minute. Who would think of driving
off to a new destination without guidance from Google or Syria?
Not The wishing Well Guide your next travel experience. Travel
(28:36):
the world as you enjoy the very best destinations and
all they offer at the best prices. Our mobile travel
app keeps your vacation on track and keeps you connected
with our team of experts for help. If you need it,
call us at five four zero nine zero eight two
three three three stop, buy two forty three Avenue or
visit us at the Wishingwell dot biz. Welcome back to
(28:58):
a Life Less Ordinary. Every Saturday morning we talk travel
and on these rare Saturday mornings we answer questions about
travel and I enjoyed this show. These are all questions
from you, our listeners, Questions that you hear us talk
about something on the show and it sparks another question
and we just maybe didn't answer it or get to
(29:19):
it during the show. Well, today that's what we're doing.
We're answering all those questions, Harry. Our next question is
can you really get me a better cruise or a
resort deal?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
And that one I can pretty almost one hundred percent
say yes. This goes back to their previous question. But
with cruise and resort deals, those cruise companies, those resorts
are talking to us continuously. If I don't get you know,
at least fifty, sometimes one hundred email messages every single
(29:49):
day from cruise lines and resorts tell me what their
best deal is. I don't get a single one, and
I'm telling you, I get a lot of messages, So
does Terry. With the cruise lines, they like to reward
the people that are sending them business, and they want
more because they know that the business that we send
(30:10):
them is good business. It's not business that someone's gotten
on the web and it's their first time cruising and
they're going to have problems, difficulties. The cruise lines know
that we're here to help you, as our client, make
it through the cruise and have a wonderful experience so
that you love the cruise line. That's our job is
to make you love us and your vacation and the providers.
(30:33):
So we have all kinds of deals. We have sale
fare announcements that come out all the time, promotions. Maybe
it's a twenty percent off, fifty percent off, you get
a beverage package, you get free Wi Fi. All of
those things come into our mailboxes every single day and
we spend about an hour in the morning sorting through
what's going on and making those available to clients as
(30:55):
they call in.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
And we talk about those every week here on a
Life Less Ordinary. We do the hot Deal at the
beginning of our show. Yeah. So if you're interested in
getting really good deals and some of those that you
might not have known if you didn't call the Wishing Well,
you can hear about them right here on a Lifeless Ordinary. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
And the one question I would caution people not to
not to call in and ask us is what's the
best deal this week? Because of the previous question you
asked me, Chris, what's the best vacation? You know, we
talked about that last time when we did our question
what's the best vacation. We have to know about you,
and our job is to find out about you, find
out what you want to do, and then we'll tell
(31:33):
you the deals that are.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
That apply to you.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
But to go for something just because it's a deal,
it's like buying something's on sale to supermarket that you
don't like to eat.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
It's the wrong solution. Brother, I have an answer. Does
that We're gonna have liver? Why it was on sale?
It was on sale? Great? Oh mom? What have you done?
All right? Next question? Why should I start planning my
trip as a trip tomorrow too soon? I've worked on
one of those today for the for the end of
the month. Someone said, yeah, I think I got a
(32:02):
few days I need to find something. And that's challenging
for us because in the season of summer travel especially,
people are planning these things twelve to eighteen months in advance.
And if you have a pick of everything twelve to
eighteen months in advance and you come in, you know
two three weeks in advance, your selection is going to
(32:24):
be a lot more limited. That doesn't mean we can't
find you something, it means it's going to be limited.
So if you think you know you want to do
something next year, you know, eight to twelve months for
sure for international trip. For cruises, we're selling cruises twelve
eighteen months out right now, they're booking cruises twelve to
(32:44):
eighteen months out consistently. Is there is there a timeline
where I've gone too early? Yeah, I think if you
start two years out, you should start doing it. But
as far as you want to go is to start thinking,
what are my destinations, what are the pluses and minuses
of this destination?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Start doing a little bit of research. So you should
start doing a little bit of that. So when you
come to us eighteen months out, you've already narrowed down
and you say, you know what, I don't want to go,
you know, to this place, but I'm looking at this place,
in this place, in this place. Give us the two
or three places. We'll help you. Again with that advice
that we have. You say, that's a great idea, Chris.
(33:25):
And the reason that you want to go there is
because you found a great deal. You saw a great price.
But it's probably good for you to know that that's
hurricane season, dh Ya. And again that's back to the
value that travel agent will say, you're making some good choices.
But you've got two or three things that you're looking at.
So if you start planning, you know about twelve to
(33:46):
eighteen months is a good would be my answer to
that question. Twelve to eighteen months is a great time frame.
We talked about this a little bit already on the
show today. But do I need a visa special documents
for my trip? Yeah, that used to be really easy.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
You needed a passport, and there were a couple countries
that for years and years and years had a visa.
You got a visa for that country if you needed it,
and you are set to go. Today the game has changed.
Countries use visas for a couple reasons. They use visas
to control who's in and out of their soil, okay,
(34:19):
coming and standing on their soil. Even if you're transiting,
as I talked about earlier, you're transiting through a countries
through one of the major international airports. Could be London,
could be Munich, Frankfurt, any of those airports. Are starting
to want to know who is in their country, who
is in their airports, and they also are starting to
(34:41):
recognize that there's an opportunity to generate some revenue for
the airports by selling these entrance visas. Yeah, so for
that reason, we're seeing a lot more in that, and
that's part of our job again to look at that.
Probably the two most popular ones that we've talked about
on and also that you'll you'll read about are the
(35:03):
ETAs and the etias. Those are the two that you
see a lot of right now. United Kingdom is popular
for that, the EU is popular for that. Many of
the Caribbean countries are popular for having these visas, and
(35:23):
all it is is an authorization to enter. The good
news is also your travel agent will tell you this.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
For example, if you buy the visa for it's about
twenty two dollars to enter the United Kingdom. What they
might not tell you is that visa is good for
two years, so if you're going to go on a
trip next year, it's only costing you ten dollars for
each trip. But that's something that they're happy to let
you buy again if you want to. But your travel
(35:49):
agent will tell you you don't need to do that.
Next question, Harry, can you guarantee that I'll get upgraded?
I wish, okay, upgrades are there, but like anything else,
this is something the vendors are giving away for free.
When you talk about upgrades, there are a few opportunities
we have, so I don't want to say never, but
(36:10):
there are a few opportunities we have where you are
guaranteed a one room upgrades. Sometimes it comes to as
part of a deal. Sometimes it comes to as part
of a perk or benefit that we get with that vendor.
A lot of times it's a hotel that's doing those
kinds of things, or the temporary ones, or a lot
of them are cruises. We'll get a one cabin category
(36:31):
upgrade automatically on those, but we get them through our
preferred partner programs. We pass those on to our clients,
you know, obviously at no cost. We also can secure upgrades,
or we can get priority status and priority status. I'm
talking about things like, hey, we're arriving at that hotel
(36:52):
at noon. Checking is three o'clock. We can get the
hotel to agree to let your family be the first
of the people to check in, so they won't promise
twelve o'clock, but there's a fine, fine chance you'll be
checking in at twelve o'clock.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Sounds nice to be able to get in and just
get it Yeah, get the hay and rest for a
little bit, recuper rate what happens if something goes wrong
while I'm traveling.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, that's the real reason that you need a great
travel agent. And at the Wishing Well, we have an
emergency number that rings to either Terry or my cell phone.
We ask our clients not to use it and unless
it's a true emergency, but this number is very important
because it gets to somebody. You don't get a recording,
(37:42):
but you get somebody who's going to help you, and
that's very important. We also have an online app that
we give our travelers with their destination and trip on there.
They can send us a message from that app too,
So if they're in a foreign country and they don't
have the ability or don't choose to make a phone call,
they can suggest from that app and we'll also get
(38:03):
their message so that we can do something about it
right then. The best thing to do something, the best
time to do something about a problem is when that
problems occurring. It makes you the traveler happy because we
can fix it right now. And it's also easier to
take care of what the vendor. If we talk to
a vendor and say, hey, you know, Chris was at
your property and he was you know, he's home now,
(38:23):
but he was really dissatisfied with the fact that there
were no towels in his room. For two days, they
had to use dirty towels. There's really not a fix
for that, is it once you're home. But if you
let us know while you're on the trip, there's something
we can do about it. We can call the general
manager of the hotel and say, hey, we've got a
VIP client there. He's not happy. He thinks he's entitled
(38:44):
to clean towels. We don't know why, but he wants
clean towels. Let's get some clean towels up to his
room right now. Next question, I'm feeling kind of pressured
to book today because I hear prices are going to
go up.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Are they really going to go up? If I wait,
they will all go up. Okay, they will always go up.
And it's it's always a little bit of a puzzlement
to me when people, especially are looking at airline prices.
But then you know, the truth of the matter is
I do this too. I'll look at a price and
I'll just you know, look at it and look at
(39:18):
it and look at it and want to get another
twenty five dollars off that airline price. And I'll spend
an hour saving twenty five dollars, but I don't save
the twenty five dollars. Usually, the airlines are very sophisticated.
They use AI and all the tools to manage revenue,
so they watch what's going on with you know, with
(39:42):
people asking for flights. Hotels are no different. They're getting
very sophisticated too. They watch demand and guess what happens
when they think a lot of people are looking at
their product, prices go up? They sure do. Yeah, this
is not travel related, but I know this used to
be a thing that some of the some of the
websites where you could buy, like home to Core and
(40:03):
things like that, they were watching I guess the IP
address that you were browsing from. And if you open
something up on a computer at work and searched for
the same item, it would have a different price on
it because you kept looking at it on your phone.
They knew you wanted it, so the price they would
keep it at a certain number, and then for other
people it was a different price. Yeah, that's called demand
(40:24):
sensitive pricing. Is a long term for that is wrong. However,
you know.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
That's what happens. I mean, if you if you look around,
you're going to see that there's a lot of that
that goes on in the world a lot of different ways.
But what I will say is that one of the
things that we do normally each week is we talk
about the last minute deals. We look for the last
minut deals. And much like they watch inventory and might
(40:52):
raise price if they see there's demand there, there are
occasions where demand has gone down. Maybe they had a
group group that was booked on a cruise and that
group fell through, so all of a sudden they've got,
you know, twenty cabins or thirty cabins that are available.
There's a last min's sale. Those are the things that
(41:13):
we will know about. So I'm not saying you'll never
get a better deal. I'm just saying it's but that's
a gamble. It's a gamble, and you know, everybody has
to choose what they placed their rets.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
I feel like I could have written this question, do
I have to follow the itinerary or can I customize
my trip?
Speaker 2 (41:33):
You can customize your trip, and there's a lot of
interesting ways that you can customize your trip, and the
best ways to customize your trip are ways that don't
cost you anything extra. And that is part of the
kind of trip that we will book for you. If
we know you're somebody that is wanting to just have
a day to kind of look around and do things
(41:56):
on your own, we'll find a trip that's got that
free day in that lets you fill it in, and
you fill that in at the very end. And so Chris,
you have a very customized trip.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
You have the trip that.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Is the economical trip that you purchased with that customization
and to say how you wanted to spend that particular day.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
You're listening to a lifeless ordinary. This is the travel
show and podcasts from your friends at the Wishing Well.
Today we are answering listener emails. Next question, can you
help with group or multi generational travel? Oh, we're expert
at that.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
That's something that's really really become popular in the last
couple of years, and again something we've talked about on
this particular show many many times. The group that I
mentioned earlier that was traveling you know this morning, that's
a multi generational trip. You've got three generations in that
family traveling on this particular trip, and there are a
(42:54):
lot of things you have to take into considerations. Some
people are going to want to have or need wheelchairs scooters.
Other people are going to want to have day activities.
So you have to look at a multi generational travel
experience as something that accommodates all of those people. And
having the expertise and having the resources is really important
(43:17):
to be able to pull the logistics together so that
grandma and grandpa may sit and take a rest while
the kids are running around in that new Universal Studios
park for the day, but they all meet for dinner
together and you know, and have a great family experience.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
So if your dream was to go see Mount Etna,
you might be questioning whether or not it's safe to
travel there right now. This question asked, is my particular
destination safe right now? And assume that means traveling to
international destinations. Well, even domestic destinations can be unsafe from
time to time.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
You know, you talked about the wildfires that are in
Canada right now. You look at those they're affecting destinations
in the United States, I believe this week, and they're
still in New York City area. Some of the smoke
from those wildfires is there. We had experienced last year
where we were traveling to Canada with a group that
we've had to postpone the entire trip. Was that on
(44:12):
the Rocky Mountain as I was on the Rocky Mountaineer.
We've postponed that entire trip by twelve months. So you
talk about the logistics of groups and things like that,
but when you look at destinations, there are all kinds
of things that can happen. There can be airport delays,
there can be you know, issues with weather, there can
be issues with you know, with crime or political activity.
(44:34):
Those happen all around the world, in the United States
and outside of the United States. It's our job to
stay on top of that.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
We have some tools.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
I know we've again these are things we've talked about
on this show. I think that's probably what's you know,
what sprung some of these questions. We have tools that
we look at and that we can help you find
also when you're traveling with us, so that you can
look at them real time yourself with us to know
what's going on, what's the alert status at a destination,
(45:03):
what's going on health wise and a destination. So all
of those things are very very important, and that's how
we can answer that question. Is it's safe to travel
right now? And as we look toward the future, you know,
what do we see, what do we hear are the
trends for that destination in the future. We don't want
to be negotiable when it comes to our client's safety
(45:26):
and if we really feel that a destination is unsafe, Chris,
we have refused to send people to certain places. We
have refused to send people to places unless they go
to destinations inside of those countries that we know are
safe to be inside of those countries because we want
our clients to return home safely, we want them to
(45:47):
love us, and we just wouldn't have a conscience if
we didn't deal with it that way.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
So for me, when I travel, my favorite part is
the food, both of us of food. Can you help
with restaurant reservations and with local tours?
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Absolutely, we do that a couple ways. We do that
by booking those tours in advance. We do that by
booking those restaurants in advance. That's part of the process
of getting to know you and I know you like
to eat. If you and I go on a vacation,
you and I will have a fantastic vacation because we
both like to eat. So we look at the restaurants
and that can take place on a cruise, it can
(46:26):
take place on a destination vacation. If we're going to
a particular country, we want to partake of that food.
I was in the Middle East last year. I wanted
to make sure I had, you know, some of the
local cuisine went to the local restaurants. We use our network.
We use our network of hotels. Concierges that we know
at those hotels can not only get you into that restaurant,
(46:48):
looks to you a nice place to sit at that
restaurant as well, so we can book all of those
things in advance on ships. Do you know about chef's
tables on ships? Yeah, I think we've talked about that. Yeah,
a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Don't.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
You want to have a really exquisite experience, exclusive experience
on a ship, have us book you a dinner at
the chef's table. It's not impossible to do, and it's
not outrageously expensive, but it's just one of those things
that makes for a wonderful memory on a trip and
at the wishing well, we know who to ask to
(47:24):
make sure that happens for you.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Well, they answer questions for you as you're sitting there
at a chef's table. Yeah, learn a little bit about Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Actually, I've been in situations where they've even shared parts
of the recipe or talked about parts of the recipe.
Some of the chefs will share recipes as well.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Said the last trip she was on the they gave
her the recipe for something for one of the desserts. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
One trip we were on about a year ago, we
were on a trip and it took us not only
our group, it was a group, a wishing well group.
When we had some people who were curious about the
restaurant and the preparations and all that, the chef arranged
for us to take a tour of the ship. We
went back into the kitchens, watch the food prep happening.
(48:12):
See the freezers where they're storing sizes of beef, where
the butchers come to carve the stakes that they're serving upstairs.
Those kinds of accommodations are the kinds of combinations that
make a trip superbly memorable.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
So you have done a stellar job getting to know
me booking my trip. I am ready to go. Something
happens now I need to cancel. Can I change my trip?
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yeah, especially if you have insurance. Okay, that's one of
the reasons we talked about insurance earlier. Is it possible
to cancel a trip. Yes, there's different kinds of cancelations
that are available. Sometimes it's an absolute cancelation. I just
can't go anymore. I'm you know, I'm incapacitated. Somehow I
won't be traveling anymore. Other times, more often it's a
(48:57):
matter of I've got to postpone this trip so we
can push that trip as one. We just talked about
the train trip we had for our travelers to Cannon
on Rocky Mountaineer. We postpone that trip by a full
twelve months for the whole trip, and we protected all
of our travelers on that trip. Part of it is
how you do the booking. Again, when we talked about
(49:17):
those tickets, that's another reason you don't want basic economy
air tickets, Chris. We want to have flexibility in the
trip so we can change it.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
This is our last question. I love listening to a
lifeless ordinary. I hear you talking about the wishing well.
What sets the wishing Well apart from everybody else.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Oh wow, that's a great question. I wish I would
have had that in front of me ahead of time.
I think the reason that people like the wishing Well
and trust the wishing Well to book their vacation experiences
is we are not a booking agency. In fact, our
job and the way that we approach it at the
(49:57):
Wishing Well is to create incredible journeys. That starts by
getting to know who you are, what you like, what
you can do, what you can do, what some of
the constraints are. Maybe it's dietary, maybe it's a physical constraint,
but getting to know you and we listen to you,
we interview you, and we personalize travel. We don't just
book travel, but we personalize it and we elevate that
(50:20):
travel with the kinds of things we were talking about,
the perks, the upgrades of things like this, and if
and when something doesn't happen exactly as it should, which
does happen on travel. It's normal driving down the road.
Things happen that you don't expect. We advocate for you
and for us. Being part of the Virtual so network
means we've got a great toolbox. Having somebody like Terry
(50:42):
at my side when I have a question about a
client who's got, you know, forty five plus years experience
doing this. That's what sets us apart from others. We
don't just book trips. We create travel experiences, and I
can guarantee your not going to find that online. Before
(51:03):
we wrap, I wanted to leave you with one other thing.
When you're booking with the Travel Advisor, you aren't just
booking a trip, but you're unlocking that passport into the extraordinary.
And that's our job. That's why we have that affiliation.
You're going to get what Terry calls velvet rope access,
that behind the scenes, the chef's dinners, the exclusive amenities,
(51:25):
a global network of connections that we can count on
that we can call if there's something that you want
to do, something that comes up last minute. You say,
you know what, I've never had a camel ride. I'm
in Egypt. Can you get me one of those? The
answer is certainly we can. Online, you're going to book
a reservation with the Wishing Well, you're going to book
(51:46):
a travel experience, and everyone that comes in and if
you saw the emails that come out when we communicate
with our travel advisors at the properties and things like that.
Our counterparts. Every one of our clients, we tell them
they're a vi P. You may not know you're a
VIP to us, but if they know you're a vi P,
(52:09):
and when you show up at their destination, they treat
you like a VIP. You're gonna feel like a VIP.
That's a hundred times better than me telling you your one.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
Harry, I love this, This is this. It's always fun
when we get to ask the questions directly to the experts,
and I love the answers we got today. I'm ready.
I feel like we're ready to book a trip and
you're gonna get me to a dream destination. We absolutely
will whatever that is. We just got to find out
what your dream destination is. And between Terry and I
(52:41):
and the rest of the team at the Wishing Well,
we'll make it happen, and we'll make it something that
you have memories of forever and ever. You help us
see travel this week through New Lens. Harry, how do
we get in touch with you if we'd like to
book a trip?
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Well, As Terry says, we're easy to find. We're on
the web at the wishing Well dot biz. You can
look at the group trips, you can listen to the podcast,
do a lot of things. You can give us a call.
We're at five four zero nine zero eight two three
three three. Stop by and visit us. We're at two
forty three nef Avenue in Harrisonburg, and we don't care
(53:15):
if you're from nearby or far away.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
We'd love to see We'd love to talk to you. Chris.
This has been a life less Ordinary, the travel show
from your friends at the wishing Well at two forty
three nef Avenue in Harrisonburg. If you have any questions
on topics discussed today, please reach out to the wishing
Well online at the wishing Well dop biz or five
four oho nine oh eight twenty three thirty three. Past
episodes are available on the iHeartRadio app. And we'll see
(53:39):
again next Saturday morning at ten for a life less
Ordinary from the wishing Well
This is a Lifeless Ordinary, the travel show and podcasts
from your friends at the wishing Well two forty three
f Avenue in Harsmer and online at the wishing Well
dot biz. The wishing Well is your ultimate luxury concierge,
travel agency and A Lifeless Ordinary is a travel show
and podcast hosted by Terry Dean, bringing her over forty
years of experience in the travel industry to help guide
(00:21):
you to great experiences in your travel, whether it be
around the block, around the country, or around the world.
Let's bring in Terry Dean and say hello, Actually I
should say Harry. Hello, Harry. How are you doing this week? Hey, Chris, Hello,
It's good to see I. Oh gosh, it's been a
couple of weeks since you and I have gotten to
sit down and talk travel. Last episode that we did,
(00:42):
we were talking about all those questions people are afraid
to ask their travel agent, and you have all the answers.
So we're gonna do that again this week. Before we
get into that, though, I know, we've got some travel
news to get caught up on.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
All right, Yeah, I guess the biggest thing to get
caught up on, Chris, is that Universal Orlando celebrate a
grand opening of their brand new theme park, Epic Universe.
This just a week or so ago at the twenty
first of May, and this was a big, big deal.
Mark Woodbury, the chairman of CEO of Universal's Destinations and Experience, says,
(01:17):
this moment marks a significant milestone in our company's journey
to redefine the theme park experience for our global audience
and for generations of families to come. Universal has kind
of been they also ran down in the Orlando area,
But I think they're really upping the game with this
new theme park. You've got Super Nintendo World, You've got
(01:40):
Dark Universe, You've got the Wizarding World of Harry Potter,
the Ministry of Magic, You've got How to Train Your Dragon,
the Mythical Isle of Burke. So much like their competitors
on the other side of town, they've got several theme parks,
and I think this is really stepping up the game.
So what we've done in Orlando is we now transfer
formed it from a place that people went to see
(02:02):
Disney to a place where people are going to go
to see everything in Orlando. This new Universal Studios is
now its own one week long destination. Think about that. Yeah,
and think about it.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
If you're going with your kids, you can have a
two week vacation at all the theme parks.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And I haven't even even touched on SeaWorld or all
the other things you can do in Orlando. But one
of the things I expect to see over time is
that families are going to pick and choose from amongst
the Disney properties, from amongst the Universal properties, and go
to see particular things at each park. And the great
(02:39):
part is you've got hotels there that are ready to
accommodate that kind of park hopping atmosphere. I think it's
a great thing for travelers. We've got two incredibly immersive, intense, interactive,
technologically over the top parks.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I think when you look at the investment that you
make as a family to head down to Orlando, whether
you're going to Disney or Universe or sea World, it's
nice to have those options. It's nice not to feel
like I have to go see everything in Disney because
I bought tickets to Disney. I might want to see
a little bit of everything in all the land of Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
So I think this is a great thing for tourism.
I think it's a great thing for the Orlando area,
and I think it's a great thing for families too,
because they can pick and choose.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I went to Orlando. Oh gosh, it's been twenty almost
twenty five years ago, and I don't even know if
it's still there. It was a section of Disney that
you could get into for free, and it looks sort
of like Amazing Street. Yeah that's the main street. That's
the shopping area. Yeah, you were able to go to
the shops and some restaurants and everything. I had the
(03:45):
best vacation Orlando. We did the free Disney Street. Is
that Main Street USA or something, I don't know what
it's called. It's happening down there. And then Disney Downtown
and yeah, that's what it was. And then put put golf.
We went pup, punt goff like every day we were there.
It was to me, that was like the best vacation ever.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Well, I think that's the thing I'm talking about now.
Orlando has something for everybody. You can putt putt golf,
you can see Harry Potter, you can see the Magic Kingdom.
Whatever you want to do, you'll be able to do
it right there in Orlando. If I go at this
point would be for the roller coasters. I want to
ride real fast, jerking you around, spinning upside down kind
(04:27):
of roller coasters. So the other thing that we're seeing
in the news is I've read a survey and it's
looking ahead at some of the events coming up. We're
in twenty five, but in twenty twenty six, we're already
hearing interest in FIFA for the World Cup, America's two
hundred and fiftieth anniversary, the twenty twenty eight Summer Olympics
are going to be driving tourism. So we're looking ahead,
(04:49):
travel advisors, we're looking at all the international travel that's
coming up, and we're really excited about that. We see
a lot of goings on in what we call land tours,
is families that are going to come to a location
and spend time doing the particular event that's going on there,
plus they want to go see everything that's near that city.
(05:10):
So that's another big thing in the news. The travel
agents are seeing that. If we're seeing that, it's because
the traveling public is starting to ask us about that.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
You mentioned Summer Olympics to the Winter Olympics drive tourism.
Summer Olympics seem to be more popular Winter Olympics. I
like to watch them on TV, so for obvious reasons.
So yeah, you're going to see a lot with that.
And then the other big thing in the news, and
this goes back to my roots. You know, I'm a
Detroit boy, right, So one of my very own Diana Ross,
(05:44):
has been named godmother of the second Icon class ship.
The Star of the seas Oral Caribbean has named Diana
Ross the godmother. So she's going to welcome the ship
to the fleet this August. So stay tuned if you're
a Supremes fan, if you're a Diana Ross fan. I
think the trend says all these cruise lines are bringing
(06:08):
in the celebs to help make these cruise ships a
little more popular. And one of the things I've read
that's going to be happening is they are allegedly they
have a production of Back to the Future that's going
to be on that ship. I would love to see that.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I think that's fantastic. The other thing that we're seeing
this in the news, and I'm just looking at trends
this morning, sharing with you Chris Expedition cruising something you
and Terry laugh at me. When I say I'm interested
in that expedition cruising, Harry was right.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Everybody listening, Harry was right. Wait wait wait, wait, wait,
go ahead, and let's hear the story before we make
the declaration that Harry was right.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Well, the story is that travel advisers are seeing more
and more interest in expedition cruising, and unsurprisingly, interest is
driven by the destination. Eighty percent of US advisors. We
agreed that that's the key motivator for booking an expedition
cruise is to get that bucket list experience, you know,
off the books and onto your memories and experience chart
(07:14):
the number one top choice. Not surprisingly, have I talked
about Antarctica.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I was going to ask a Antarctica.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Antarctica is it followed by the Galapagos and then ice
in Greenland.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
I'd like to go to any of those places. Well, good,
except for Antarctica for the same reason you don't want
to go to the Winter Olympics. But other than that,
I'm on board. So yeah, all right, you're a travel expert,
so we'll let you have that. When you were right,
all right, Harry was right.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
I can hear Terry now she said, don't give in
to him so easily.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
So I mentioned at the top of our show that
the last episode we did of a Lifeless Ordinary, we
answered our listeners questions. We get a lot of questions
from our listeners. Oh yeah, we appreciate your emails and
your calls. If you want to uh call the Wishing Well,
it's easy is call them at five four h nine
oh eight twenty three thirty three. You could stop it
(08:07):
in person and ask questions. They'd love to answer your questions,
and we do that all day long. Yeah, and they're
looking on nef Avenue in Harrisonburg and they're online at
the wishing Well dop biz. You can find the contact
page there. You can send your questions to either Harry
or Terry and they'll get an answer for you. But
right now we're going to answer a lot of those questions.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, this set off the I mean, it just set
off a firestorm of questions, and that's why I wrote
some of them down. We're going to go through some
of them this morning, but people email them to us. Also,
if you want to email, you can use infull at
the wishing Well dot biz or if you like Terry better,
Terry at the Wishing Weld o biz or on the
slim chance you like me better, Harry at the Wishing
(08:46):
Weld out buz. Either way, we'll get those questions and
we'll keep bringing them forward and trying to give you answers.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
So we're going to take a quick break. When we
come back, we'll start answering more of your questions here
on a Life Less Ordinary? Who would think of driving
off to a new destination with guidance from Google or
Syria at the Wishing Weld guide your next travel experience.
Travel the world as you enjoy the very best destinations
and all they offer at the best prices. Our mobile
travel app keeps your vacation on track and keeps you
(09:13):
connected with our team of experts for help if you
need it, call us at five four zero nine.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Zero eight two three three.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Three stop buy two forty three nef Avenue or visit
us at the Wishingwell dot biz and welcome back to
a Life Less Ordinary, the travel show and podcast from
your friends at the Wishing Well. They're located as we
just mentioned, on nep Avenue in Harrisonburg. You can also
find them online at the Wishingwell dot biz or give
him a call. They'd love to talk to you even today.
(09:41):
You can give them a call. Five four oh nine
oh eight, twenty three thirty three, and we're here with
Harry Rife from The Wishing Well and Harry, you're a
travel expert. So they say, so, you say that sounded mean.
I should have said it that way, Harry. Now you
don't have mean bon in you, Chris, let's start. Let's
(10:03):
start with the questions and get away from me. Why
should I use a travel advisor instead of booking online myself?
I've asked that question when I first started hosting the show,
and I look forward to hearing what you have to
say about that.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, and I think this is probably one of the
most popular or often heard questions we get, and because
the reason for that is because people can book a
number of ways. A lot of people book online, a
lot of people rely on their friend, a lot of
people rely on someone that's been to the place they
want to go five years ago. All of those are,
(10:38):
you know, reasonable possibilities. But booking well, booking online might
seem easy, but it's kind of like, I guess the
NLG I would use. It's like building a house, Chris,
I've built a couple of houses, and they are not easy. Uh,
You've got to have a house that has a blueprint,
has a plan, and you have to have the expertise
(11:00):
to know how to read that blueprint, to know what
to look for, to know where the pitfalls are.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And when you work with a travel advisor, what you're
doing is you're bringing on an experienced builder if you're
building a house, but you bring on somebody who's gone
through this time and time again, probably as recently as
that morning or the night before. So the experience, the
expertise that you're getting is just incredible, let's say professional guidance.
(11:28):
You also get exclusive perks at the wishing Well. One
of the things you and Terry and I talk about
all the time is our affiliation with Virtuoso. Virtuoso is
such a valuable tool for us. It helps as we
do travel planning, but it also helps because Virtuoso puts
some things out there for our travelers. They get benefits
(11:51):
that they don't necessarily even think about or certainly pay
for that comes for free. So you get these perks
in the most important thing. I've never ever been on
the internet, gotten flustered, frustrated, and found an easy to
call phone number for someone to give me an answer.
(12:12):
And that's the truth. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
And have you ever hit the button and wished you
hadn't hit the purchase button, you hit some other button
and then you think about a question afterwards.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I you know, I just had that happen to me.
A couple of weeks ago. I purchased something and as
I hit the submit button, I see the message at
the top of the screen that says, if you're purchasing
over seventy nine dollars, shipping is free. Yeah, and I'd
already hit submit on it. YEP. I did reach out
to them, and it was so hard to find their
contact information. They refunded my shipping, but it wasn't easy
(12:45):
to figure out how to get that money back. Well.
Their whole business model is built on They spend their
resources on advertising, Google, advertising, placement, all the things that
get you to them, which is great. It's a small
our business strategy. The business strategy at the Wishing Well
is we don't spend money on that. When people get
(13:07):
to us. Instead of getting our money spent on advertising,
they get the money spent on having somebody that can
answer all the questions. So I think about how many
things in our life have disappeared because it has become
easy enough for people to do it on their own
(13:28):
instead of having to pay an expert.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And sometimes they aren't easy to do on your own.
Have you been to the self checkout line in the
supermarket lately?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
You do it on your own? And how much extra
time does it take? How much hassle does it take?
And how much do you get paid for doing that
cashiering job and bagging? I'm sure there's a discount building somewhere.
I'm thinking like the DIY attitude. It's like I'm thinking
about graphic artists. Everybody has photoshop or access to something
(13:57):
or AI. Now that'll do it for you. In this mindset,
I'm smart, I'm talented. I can do this myself. You
can until you realize that you're in over your head.
And that's why I think travel experts are so important.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, well, that's where you know that expert knowledge and
a personalized service I think is the big advantage. You know,
to answer your question, what's the advantage? You get expert knowledge,
you get personalized services, you get that deep dive into destinations.
We have been to many of the destinations that people
want to go to. If not, we know people that have,
and we can use our network of travel agents to
(14:33):
find information from somebody who's personally been there. We can
ask about that destination, what are the hidden gems, what
are the ethnic experiences, what are the best places to visit?
And part of our job also, just like if you
go to a custom tailor, there'll tailor that clothing for you,
we're going to tailor your vacation experience for you. It's
(14:54):
great if you can find something that mostly fits, but
it's tough to have to live with some something that
mostly fits. What if you get something that mostly fits
and you can do a little bit of tweaking and
tailoring to make it a perfect fit or a near
perfect fit. That's what we do, and we do that
by going through that process of interviewing you. When people
(15:14):
come in and ask me about planning a vacation, they say,
what do you think I should do?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
I don't know you.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
I don't know what your favorite shows are, I don't
know what your favorite leisure activities are. I don't know
what the favorite places you visited are. I don't know,
I don't know, I don't know. My job is to
ask you those questions to pull those answers out of you,
almost like an interview. And Terry and you have talked
about that on this podcast before, on the show before.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
She's trying to understand you and what you want, what
your family wants, so that we can recommend a vacation
that fits those kind of needs, not Terry and Harry's needs.
And also when you talk about family, if you're booking
for a lot of if you're doing that on your own,
(16:02):
and all of a sudden you've got somebody in the
family going but I don't want to do that, and
now you're trying to figure out how to how are
you going to make this an enjoyable vacation. You have
answers for those kind of objections. You can find the
happy middle ground and go, you know what I have
exactly what you can do while the rest of the
family is scuba diving.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Actually, this morning, as we're speaking, okay, I have a
family that's arriving in Europe. They are arriving from three
different destinations in the United States to enjoy the same
week long luxury cruise. The logistics of getting them there,
getting them to their pre trip hotel so they can
(16:41):
spend a night and kind of, you know, say hello
to each other they haven't seen each other for a
little while, and get ready for that cruise the next morning,
get all the transportation coordinated to get them to the
hotel the next morning. Different set of transportation because now
there's more of them. They're going on their cruise, and
at the end of the crews we have the same
thing in reverse because they're going to be dispersing to
(17:05):
different locations back in the United States. And when you
talk about doing that, you hear in the news issues
with airlines, airports, all those things. Our job at the
Wishing Well is to stay on top of that, watch
those flights, work with the transportation providers, work with the
airlines to make sure that everybody arrives together, and everybody
(17:27):
leads together, and they start from their destination and they
end up at their destination at home when this trip
is done. So the more complex that trip is, the
more value you get from that travel professional and probably
the best value. You know what we charge for our
professional services.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Cherry told me it's nothing, and I told her I
didn't believe her.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
She's right, it's nothing. There's very very few things are
next to nothing. Very very few things we charge for,
and it's because we have the expertise, we have the tools,
so we can make them happen without having to expend
a lot of effort, Chris. We know what to do
and how to do it, so it's just kind of natural,
rather than somebody who's put something online is going to
(18:13):
spend three hours figuring out how to put all the
pieces in parts together to make something happen. If we
had to do that, we would have to charge you.
But we don't have to do that. So that's the
best thing. We talk about. Visas also today, visas I've heard,
you know on the broadcast, we've talked about visas, different
(18:34):
visas for different countries, different procedures for entering and exiting
different countries. Those are things that we stay on top of.
I referenced a website of one of the major airlines
this week and they said, you don't need a visa
to pass through this country's airport. I'm not going to
call out who they were, but then I said, that
(18:55):
doesn't sound right. I've heard some chattered a little bit differently.
So I called somebody that I know is at that
airline and I said what are you telling people? And
he said, I'd tell my travelers, get this visa. It's
twenty dollars and it can mean the difference between you
being delayed in an airport transfer onto your final destination,
or not delayed.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
He said.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
The government's kind of being, you know, a little bit
sketchy about how they're doing things and what they're doing.
Buy this visa for twenty bucks. It's the cheapest insurance
you can get. Guess what I recommended to my travelers,
Get the visa. Get the visa. You got it, Harry.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
One of the other things that we get asked a
lot is I'm spending so much time on this. It
is so stressful, pulling your hair out trying to figure
out did I get the right thing? Am I is
there going to be a plane to when I land?
You know? Am I going to be stuck in whatever
my layover? You know? Situation. How do you help with
(19:52):
alleviating all those time and stress issues that go into travel. Yeah,
that's a great question. Will we do it?
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Because we have experience and when we do the research
and planning, we know the right questions to ask. So
when a listener is planning an individual trip, they're going
to think about all these things eventually, or the people
in their family that are traveling with them are going
to think about it too. But the research and planning,
it's a really time consuming effort, and most people like
(20:19):
to have some value on their time. I mean, you
can sleep, you can go out to dinner, you can
do other things, or you can research and plan a trip.
It's great to do some of that, but then hand
that over to the travel agent to do the parts
that we do best, especially when it comes to a
complex itinerary, because we can compare options, we can manage
the booking process. We can make sure that that booking
(20:42):
process is carefully threaded together so that all the pieces
fit in the end. Worst thing you can do is
get to an airport and leave from that city. But
you're leaving from a different airport. But forgot to figure
out how you're going to get from one side of
New York to the other side of New York. You
got a family, you know of four or five, so
(21:02):
you've got kids, and you've got bags and stuff. You're
coming into one New York airport, you're leaving from another.
It's tough to get across town, especially if you're arriving
during rush hour, especially if you haven't thought about how
you're going to do that. Those are the things that
for us are very very easy. We can streamline that process.
We put all of the lo gistical details together. We
(21:24):
look at the options when you book a flight. Do
you know you can fly in the same airplane and
you might be flying on a United flight or a
Luftanza flight, or you might be flying on an Air
France flight that's code shared with another airline, And if
you look at those things, you may price those flights differently.
So immediately we know we can save you money by
(21:45):
looking for who's going on that route for the cheapest
price rather than I'm going to fly in United. You
get your United miles either way, so it's not a
big difference. But if we can save you a couple
hundred dollars, why not in the best thing I think
in all of what you're talking about is that peace
of mind knowing that somebody who knows what they're doing
(22:07):
has looked at it and kind of given it the
blessing to say, yep, this is correct. You can put
your fine touches in there. But if we look at
it we'll look at it and make sure everything fits
seamlessly and smoothly together, and say, Chris, what a great
job you've done planning. We've helped iron out these things
like you forgot this, or you forgot this, or you
(22:29):
forgot that. But now it's looking great. You can take
it home, tell your family you've done it. Harry, I
like this question. I've heard that if I use a
travel professional, they've got exclusive deals and perks for me.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Is that true? It's absolutely true. Of Virtuoso is the
biggest one that you hear us talk about. Automatically, when
you book certain things with the Wishing Well, you get
these Virtuoso perks automatically added to your reservation. It could
be something simple like a two hundred dollars cabin credit
on a crew per person. It could be an upgrade
(23:03):
at a hotel to the best available room in that hotel.
It could be something you know, simple like transfers. Some
of our properties will pick you up at the airport
and transfer you in a limousine to their property. That's
nice kinds of perks. Besides that, we have industry connections
also outside of virtual so where we know people at
(23:25):
properties and we can call those people and say, my
great friend Chris is coming with his family. You know,
his daughters celebrate on a birthday and we want to
do something special form They say, no problem, we have
those kinds of you know, connections with the concierge, so
room upgrades meals. That's another big one. If you go
(23:46):
to Europe, most hotels do not provide free breakfast like
you see a lot of places in the United States.
Our hotels, because of the virtual also connection and because
of the affiliations that we have, we will get a
free breakfast. We've just put fifty dollars in your pocket, okay,
every time. And the big one is the perks that
(24:09):
we get is when something goes wrong, we have people,
we have phone numbers that are not public, you can't
find them on Google, that we can call and get
things straightened out. And that's that's magic when you're in trouble.
I love having an advocate. Yes, I already know the
answer to this question, but I still I think it's
(24:30):
a question that needs addressed. Is travel insurance really worth it?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Oh my goodness, yes, now more than ever, especially since COVID,
Especially since COVID, there's so many things that can interrupt travel,
and I think COVID was something that gave people, you know,
a lot of pause because travel was what came to
a full stop. But travel insurance is so essential nowadays,
(24:56):
especially if you're traveling with a family, especially if you're
traveling outside of the country. People say, oh, yeah, I'm retired,
and my bucket list says, I'm going to go visit
all of these places. I'm on Medicare. Medicare is fantastic.
It's a tremendous health insurance policy. It works great in
(25:16):
the United States. When I'm out of the country, I
have travel insurance because the deductibles on Medicare and on
many insurance policies outside of the United States, you are
what they call out of network. Everyone's got networks now
for their insurance. Sounds like an exclusive country club. It's terrible.
(25:36):
It's not an exclusive at all. What it means is
if you're not in a network, you're going to be
paying through the nose. So travel insurance is important. If
you can't afford to lose that trip investment, you should invest.
Travel insurance typically costs about ten percent of the cost
of your trip. But if somebody gets sick, before the trip,
(25:58):
if somebody gets sick or injured during the trip, of
something unexpected happens, your bags don't make it, your flights
don't make it. All these possible things can happen. Travel
insurance is there, and that's the lever to make things
right for you, Chris, And don't look at travel insurance
as that ten percent add on. Look at it as
(26:18):
just part of the cost of your vacation.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Peace of mind, piece of mind.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Would you get in your car and drive down the
road sixty miles an hour without travel insurance?
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Sure, but I wouldn't do it without car insurance. Yeah,
without car insurance. Yeah? All right, So I like this
one too. We see a lot of prices online, A
lot of prices get thrown around from the online travel websites.
Is it cheaper to book though through a travel advisor?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
No, I wouldn't say it's cheaper to book through a
travel advisor, but more often than not, as a matter
of fact, almost all the time, we can match anything
that's online. But what we can also do is let
you know why what you saw online may not be.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
What you want. Maybe the question should be worded, is
it more affordable, a better option? To use a travel agent.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
It is because I've had people come in and they've said,
you know, Harry, you coded me this price on a trip.
And this part of it was the flight going from
here to I don't know, Las Vegas for you know,
a weekend. I want to spend a week in Las Vegas.
And they said, I've come back and I've found a
price that's you know, it's one hundred and fifty dollars
less for a ticket than what you gave me. I said, yeah,
(27:31):
I said, are you planning to carry anything with you
onto the plane? That is what they call basic economy.
That means that you can't carry anything on the plane. Well,
I wasn't going to check my luggage. Well you are now,
because that fear doesn't allow you to carry your luggage
onto the plane.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I didn't know that was.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Fear doesn't allow you to pre select a seat, so
you might not be sitting with your your honey or
your sweetheart, or your buddy or whoever you plan to
sit with. You also are the first one if that
flight gets so overbooked, then they can't convince someone to,
you know, to give up their ce. You are the
first one with the privilege of giving up yours because
you are the least amount of revenue on that flight
(28:12):
for the airline. So do you really want basic economy?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
No? Yeah, you don't. I want everything I can get
for my dollar. Yeah, all right, Erry. I love these questions.
I love your answers. We're going to dig into some
more listener questions here on a Life Less Ordinay, we'll
be back in a minute. Who would think of driving
off to a new destination without guidance from Google or Syria?
Not The wishing Well Guide your next travel experience. Travel
(28:36):
the world as you enjoy the very best destinations and
all they offer at the best prices. Our mobile travel
app keeps your vacation on track and keeps you connected
with our team of experts for help. If you need it,
call us at five four zero nine zero eight two
three three three stop, buy two forty three Avenue or
visit us at the Wishingwell dot biz. Welcome back to
(28:58):
a Life Less Ordinary. Every Saturday morning we talk travel
and on these rare Saturday mornings we answer questions about
travel and I enjoyed this show. These are all questions
from you, our listeners, Questions that you hear us talk
about something on the show and it sparks another question
and we just maybe didn't answer it or get to
(29:19):
it during the show. Well, today that's what we're doing.
We're answering all those questions, Harry. Our next question is
can you really get me a better cruise or a
resort deal?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
And that one I can pretty almost one hundred percent
say yes. This goes back to their previous question. But
with cruise and resort deals, those cruise companies, those resorts
are talking to us continuously. If I don't get you know,
at least fifty, sometimes one hundred email messages every single
(29:49):
day from cruise lines and resorts tell me what their
best deal is. I don't get a single one, and
I'm telling you, I get a lot of messages, So
does Terry. With the cruise lines, they like to reward
the people that are sending them business, and they want
more because they know that the business that we send
(30:10):
them is good business. It's not business that someone's gotten
on the web and it's their first time cruising and
they're going to have problems, difficulties. The cruise lines know
that we're here to help you, as our client, make
it through the cruise and have a wonderful experience so
that you love the cruise line. That's our job is
to make you love us and your vacation and the providers.
(30:33):
So we have all kinds of deals. We have sale
fare announcements that come out all the time, promotions. Maybe
it's a twenty percent off, fifty percent off, you get
a beverage package, you get free Wi Fi. All of
those things come into our mailboxes every single day and
we spend about an hour in the morning sorting through
what's going on and making those available to clients as
(30:55):
they call in.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
And we talk about those every week here on a
Life Less Ordinary. We do the hot Deal at the
beginning of our show. Yeah. So if you're interested in
getting really good deals and some of those that you
might not have known if you didn't call the Wishing Well,
you can hear about them right here on a Lifeless Ordinary. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
And the one question I would caution people not to
not to call in and ask us is what's the
best deal this week? Because of the previous question you
asked me, Chris, what's the best vacation? You know, we
talked about that last time when we did our question
what's the best vacation. We have to know about you,
and our job is to find out about you, find
out what you want to do, and then we'll tell
(31:33):
you the deals that are.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
That apply to you.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
But to go for something just because it's a deal,
it's like buying something's on sale to supermarket that you
don't like to eat.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
It's the wrong solution. Brother, I have an answer. Does
that We're gonna have liver? Why it was on sale?
It was on sale? Great? Oh mom? What have you done?
All right? Next question? Why should I start planning my
trip as a trip tomorrow too soon? I've worked on
one of those today for the for the end of
the month. Someone said, yeah, I think I got a
(32:02):
few days I need to find something. And that's challenging
for us because in the season of summer travel especially,
people are planning these things twelve to eighteen months in advance.
And if you have a pick of everything twelve to
eighteen months in advance and you come in, you know
two three weeks in advance, your selection is going to
(32:24):
be a lot more limited. That doesn't mean we can't
find you something, it means it's going to be limited.
So if you think you know you want to do
something next year, you know, eight to twelve months for
sure for international trip. For cruises, we're selling cruises twelve
eighteen months out right now, they're booking cruises twelve to
(32:44):
eighteen months out consistently. Is there is there a timeline
where I've gone too early? Yeah, I think if you
start two years out, you should start doing it. But
as far as you want to go is to start thinking,
what are my destinations, what are the pluses and minuses
of this destination?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Start doing a little bit of research. So you should
start doing a little bit of that. So when you
come to us eighteen months out, you've already narrowed down
and you say, you know what, I don't want to go,
you know, to this place, but I'm looking at this place,
in this place, in this place. Give us the two
or three places. We'll help you. Again with that advice
that we have. You say, that's a great idea, Chris.
(33:25):
And the reason that you want to go there is
because you found a great deal. You saw a great price.
But it's probably good for you to know that that's
hurricane season, dh Ya. And again that's back to the
value that travel agent will say, you're making some good choices.
But you've got two or three things that you're looking at.
So if you start planning, you know about twelve to
(33:46):
eighteen months is a good would be my answer to
that question. Twelve to eighteen months is a great time frame.
We talked about this a little bit already on the
show today. But do I need a visa special documents
for my trip? Yeah, that used to be really easy.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
You needed a passport, and there were a couple countries
that for years and years and years had a visa.
You got a visa for that country if you needed it,
and you are set to go. Today the game has changed.
Countries use visas for a couple reasons. They use visas
to control who's in and out of their soil, okay,
(34:19):
coming and standing on their soil. Even if you're transiting,
as I talked about earlier, you're transiting through a countries
through one of the major international airports. Could be London,
could be Munich, Frankfurt, any of those airports. Are starting
to want to know who is in their country, who
is in their airports, and they also are starting to
(34:41):
recognize that there's an opportunity to generate some revenue for
the airports by selling these entrance visas. Yeah, so for
that reason, we're seeing a lot more in that, and
that's part of our job again to look at that.
Probably the two most popular ones that we've talked about
on and also that you'll you'll read about are the
(35:03):
ETAs and the etias. Those are the two that you
see a lot of right now. United Kingdom is popular
for that, the EU is popular for that. Many of
the Caribbean countries are popular for having these visas, and
(35:23):
all it is is an authorization to enter. The good
news is also your travel agent will tell you this.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
For example, if you buy the visa for it's about
twenty two dollars to enter the United Kingdom. What they
might not tell you is that visa is good for
two years, so if you're going to go on a
trip next year, it's only costing you ten dollars for
each trip. But that's something that they're happy to let
you buy again if you want to. But your travel
(35:49):
agent will tell you you don't need to do that.
Next question, Harry, can you guarantee that I'll get upgraded?
I wish, okay, upgrades are there, but like anything else,
this is something the vendors are giving away for free.
When you talk about upgrades, there are a few opportunities
we have, so I don't want to say never, but
(36:10):
there are a few opportunities we have where you are
guaranteed a one room upgrades. Sometimes it comes to as
part of a deal. Sometimes it comes to as part
of a perk or benefit that we get with that vendor.
A lot of times it's a hotel that's doing those
kinds of things, or the temporary ones, or a lot
of them are cruises. We'll get a one cabin category
(36:31):
upgrade automatically on those, but we get them through our
preferred partner programs. We pass those on to our clients,
you know, obviously at no cost. We also can secure upgrades,
or we can get priority status and priority status. I'm
talking about things like, hey, we're arriving at that hotel
(36:52):
at noon. Checking is three o'clock. We can get the
hotel to agree to let your family be the first
of the people to check in, so they won't promise
twelve o'clock, but there's a fine, fine chance you'll be
checking in at twelve o'clock.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Sounds nice to be able to get in and just
get it Yeah, get the hay and rest for a
little bit, recuper rate what happens if something goes wrong
while I'm traveling.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, that's the real reason that you need a great
travel agent. And at the Wishing Well, we have an
emergency number that rings to either Terry or my cell phone.
We ask our clients not to use it and unless
it's a true emergency, but this number is very important
because it gets to somebody. You don't get a recording,
(37:42):
but you get somebody who's going to help you, and
that's very important. We also have an online app that
we give our travelers with their destination and trip on there.
They can send us a message from that app too,
So if they're in a foreign country and they don't
have the ability or don't choose to make a phone call,
they can suggest from that app and we'll also get
(38:03):
their message so that we can do something about it
right then. The best thing to do something, the best
time to do something about a problem is when that
problems occurring. It makes you the traveler happy because we
can fix it right now. And it's also easier to
take care of what the vendor. If we talk to
a vendor and say, hey, you know, Chris was at
your property and he was you know, he's home now,
(38:23):
but he was really dissatisfied with the fact that there
were no towels in his room. For two days, they
had to use dirty towels. There's really not a fix
for that, is it once you're home. But if you
let us know while you're on the trip, there's something
we can do about it. We can call the general
manager of the hotel and say, hey, we've got a
VIP client there. He's not happy. He thinks he's entitled
(38:44):
to clean towels. We don't know why, but he wants
clean towels. Let's get some clean towels up to his
room right now. Next question, I'm feeling kind of pressured
to book today because I hear prices are going to
go up.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Are they really going to go up? If I wait,
they will all go up. Okay, they will always go up.
And it's it's always a little bit of a puzzlement
to me when people, especially are looking at airline prices.
But then you know, the truth of the matter is
I do this too. I'll look at a price and
I'll just you know, look at it and look at
(39:18):
it and look at it and want to get another
twenty five dollars off that airline price. And I'll spend
an hour saving twenty five dollars, but I don't save
the twenty five dollars. Usually, the airlines are very sophisticated.
They use AI and all the tools to manage revenue,
so they watch what's going on with you know, with
(39:42):
people asking for flights. Hotels are no different. They're getting
very sophisticated too. They watch demand and guess what happens
when they think a lot of people are looking at
their product, prices go up? They sure do. Yeah, this
is not travel related, but I know this used to
be a thing that some of the some of the
websites where you could buy, like home to Core and
(40:03):
things like that, they were watching I guess the IP
address that you were browsing from. And if you open
something up on a computer at work and searched for
the same item, it would have a different price on
it because you kept looking at it on your phone.
They knew you wanted it, so the price they would
keep it at a certain number, and then for other
people it was a different price. Yeah, that's called demand
(40:24):
sensitive pricing. Is a long term for that is wrong. However,
you know.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
That's what happens. I mean, if you if you look around,
you're going to see that there's a lot of that
that goes on in the world a lot of different ways.
But what I will say is that one of the
things that we do normally each week is we talk
about the last minute deals. We look for the last
minut deals. And much like they watch inventory and might
(40:52):
raise price if they see there's demand there, there are
occasions where demand has gone down. Maybe they had a
group group that was booked on a cruise and that
group fell through, so all of a sudden they've got,
you know, twenty cabins or thirty cabins that are available.
There's a last min's sale. Those are the things that
(41:13):
we will know about. So I'm not saying you'll never
get a better deal. I'm just saying it's but that's
a gamble. It's a gamble, and you know, everybody has
to choose what they placed their rets.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
I feel like I could have written this question, do
I have to follow the itinerary or can I customize
my trip?
Speaker 2 (41:33):
You can customize your trip, and there's a lot of
interesting ways that you can customize your trip, and the
best ways to customize your trip are ways that don't
cost you anything extra. And that is part of the
kind of trip that we will book for you. If
we know you're somebody that is wanting to just have
a day to kind of look around and do things
(41:56):
on your own, we'll find a trip that's got that
free day in that lets you fill it in, and
you fill that in at the very end. And so Chris,
you have a very customized trip.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
You have the trip that.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Is the economical trip that you purchased with that customization
and to say how you wanted to spend that particular day.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
You're listening to a lifeless ordinary. This is the travel
show and podcasts from your friends at the Wishing Well.
Today we are answering listener emails. Next question, can you
help with group or multi generational travel? Oh, we're expert
at that.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
That's something that's really really become popular in the last
couple of years, and again something we've talked about on
this particular show many many times. The group that I
mentioned earlier that was traveling you know this morning, that's
a multi generational trip. You've got three generations in that
family traveling on this particular trip, and there are a
(42:54):
lot of things you have to take into considerations. Some
people are going to want to have or need wheelchairs scooters.
Other people are going to want to have day activities.
So you have to look at a multi generational travel
experience as something that accommodates all of those people. And
having the expertise and having the resources is really important
(43:17):
to be able to pull the logistics together so that
grandma and grandpa may sit and take a rest while
the kids are running around in that new Universal Studios
park for the day, but they all meet for dinner
together and you know, and have a great family experience.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
So if your dream was to go see Mount Etna,
you might be questioning whether or not it's safe to
travel there right now. This question asked, is my particular
destination safe right now? And assume that means traveling to
international destinations. Well, even domestic destinations can be unsafe from
time to time.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
You know, you talked about the wildfires that are in
Canada right now. You look at those they're affecting destinations
in the United States, I believe this week, and they're
still in New York City area. Some of the smoke
from those wildfires is there. We had experienced last year
where we were traveling to Canada with a group that
we've had to postpone the entire trip. Was that on
(44:12):
the Rocky Mountain as I was on the Rocky Mountaineer.
We've postponed that entire trip by twelve months. So you
talk about the logistics of groups and things like that,
but when you look at destinations, there are all kinds
of things that can happen. There can be airport delays,
there can be you know, issues with weather, there can
be issues with you know, with crime or political activity.
(44:34):
Those happen all around the world, in the United States
and outside of the United States. It's our job to
stay on top of that.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
We have some tools.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
I know we've again these are things we've talked about
on this show. I think that's probably what's you know,
what sprung some of these questions. We have tools that
we look at and that we can help you find
also when you're traveling with us, so that you can
look at them real time yourself with us to know
what's going on, what's the alert status at a destination,
(45:03):
what's going on health wise and a destination. So all
of those things are very very important, and that's how
we can answer that question. Is it's safe to travel
right now? And as we look toward the future, you know,
what do we see, what do we hear are the
trends for that destination in the future. We don't want
to be negotiable when it comes to our client's safety
(45:26):
and if we really feel that a destination is unsafe, Chris,
we have refused to send people to certain places. We
have refused to send people to places unless they go
to destinations inside of those countries that we know are
safe to be inside of those countries because we want
our clients to return home safely, we want them to
(45:47):
love us, and we just wouldn't have a conscience if
we didn't deal with it that way.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
So for me, when I travel, my favorite part is
the food, both of us of food. Can you help
with restaurant reservations and with local tours?
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Absolutely, we do that a couple ways. We do that
by booking those tours in advance. We do that by
booking those restaurants in advance. That's part of the process
of getting to know you and I know you like
to eat. If you and I go on a vacation,
you and I will have a fantastic vacation because we
both like to eat. So we look at the restaurants
and that can take place on a cruise, it can
(46:26):
take place on a destination vacation. If we're going to
a particular country, we want to partake of that food.
I was in the Middle East last year. I wanted
to make sure I had, you know, some of the
local cuisine went to the local restaurants. We use our network.
We use our network of hotels. Concierges that we know
at those hotels can not only get you into that restaurant,
(46:48):
looks to you a nice place to sit at that
restaurant as well, so we can book all of those
things in advance on ships. Do you know about chef's
tables on ships? Yeah, I think we've talked about that. Yeah,
a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Don't.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
You want to have a really exquisite experience, exclusive experience
on a ship, have us book you a dinner at
the chef's table. It's not impossible to do, and it's
not outrageously expensive, but it's just one of those things
that makes for a wonderful memory on a trip and
at the wishing well, we know who to ask to
(47:24):
make sure that happens for you.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Well, they answer questions for you as you're sitting there
at a chef's table. Yeah, learn a little bit about Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Actually, I've been in situations where they've even shared parts
of the recipe or talked about parts of the recipe.
Some of the chefs will share recipes as well.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Said the last trip she was on the they gave
her the recipe for something for one of the desserts. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
One trip we were on about a year ago, we
were on a trip and it took us not only
our group, it was a group, a wishing well group.
When we had some people who were curious about the
restaurant and the preparations and all that, the chef arranged
for us to take a tour of the ship. We
went back into the kitchens, watch the food prep happening.
(48:12):
See the freezers where they're storing sizes of beef, where
the butchers come to carve the stakes that they're serving upstairs.
Those kinds of accommodations are the kinds of combinations that
make a trip superbly memorable.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
So you have done a stellar job getting to know
me booking my trip. I am ready to go. Something
happens now I need to cancel. Can I change my trip?
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yeah, especially if you have insurance. Okay, that's one of
the reasons we talked about insurance earlier. Is it possible
to cancel a trip. Yes, there's different kinds of cancelations
that are available. Sometimes it's an absolute cancelation. I just
can't go anymore. I'm you know, I'm incapacitated. Somehow I
won't be traveling anymore. Other times, more often it's a
(48:57):
matter of I've got to postpone this trip so we
can push that trip as one. We just talked about
the train trip we had for our travelers to Cannon
on Rocky Mountaineer. We postpone that trip by a full
twelve months for the whole trip, and we protected all
of our travelers on that trip. Part of it is
how you do the booking. Again, when we talked about
(49:17):
those tickets, that's another reason you don't want basic economy
air tickets, Chris. We want to have flexibility in the
trip so we can change it.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
This is our last question. I love listening to a
lifeless ordinary. I hear you talking about the wishing well.
What sets the wishing Well apart from everybody else.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Oh wow, that's a great question. I wish I would
have had that in front of me ahead of time.
I think the reason that people like the wishing Well
and trust the wishing Well to book their vacation experiences
is we are not a booking agency. In fact, our
job and the way that we approach it at the
(49:57):
Wishing Well is to create incredible journeys. That starts by
getting to know who you are, what you like, what
you can do, what you can do, what some of
the constraints are. Maybe it's dietary, maybe it's a physical constraint,
but getting to know you and we listen to you,
we interview you, and we personalize travel. We don't just
book travel, but we personalize it and we elevate that
(50:20):
travel with the kinds of things we were talking about,
the perks, the upgrades of things like this, and if
and when something doesn't happen exactly as it should, which
does happen on travel. It's normal driving down the road.
Things happen that you don't expect. We advocate for you
and for us. Being part of the Virtual so network
means we've got a great toolbox. Having somebody like Terry
(50:42):
at my side when I have a question about a
client who's got, you know, forty five plus years experience
doing this. That's what sets us apart from others. We
don't just book trips. We create travel experiences, and I
can guarantee your not going to find that online. Before
(51:03):
we wrap, I wanted to leave you with one other thing.
When you're booking with the Travel Advisor, you aren't just
booking a trip, but you're unlocking that passport into the extraordinary.
And that's our job. That's why we have that affiliation.
You're going to get what Terry calls velvet rope access,
that behind the scenes, the chef's dinners, the exclusive amenities,
(51:25):
a global network of connections that we can count on
that we can call if there's something that you want
to do, something that comes up last minute. You say,
you know what, I've never had a camel ride. I'm
in Egypt. Can you get me one of those? The
answer is certainly we can. Online, you're going to book
a reservation with the Wishing Well, you're going to book
(51:46):
a travel experience, and everyone that comes in and if
you saw the emails that come out when we communicate
with our travel advisors at the properties and things like that.
Our counterparts. Every one of our clients, we tell them
they're a vi P. You may not know you're a
VIP to us, but if they know you're a vi P,
(52:09):
and when you show up at their destination, they treat
you like a VIP. You're gonna feel like a VIP.
That's a hundred times better than me telling you your one.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
Harry, I love this, This is this. It's always fun
when we get to ask the questions directly to the experts,
and I love the answers we got today. I'm ready.
I feel like we're ready to book a trip and
you're gonna get me to a dream destination. We absolutely
will whatever that is. We just got to find out
what your dream destination is. And between Terry and I
(52:41):
and the rest of the team at the Wishing Well,
we'll make it happen, and we'll make it something that
you have memories of forever and ever. You help us
see travel this week through New Lens. Harry, how do
we get in touch with you if we'd like to
book a trip?
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Well, As Terry says, we're easy to find. We're on
the web at the wishing Well dot biz. You can
look at the group trips, you can listen to the podcast,
do a lot of things. You can give us a call.
We're at five four zero nine zero eight two three
three three. Stop by and visit us. We're at two
forty three nef Avenue in Harrisonburg, and we don't care
(53:15):
if you're from nearby or far away.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
We'd love to see We'd love to talk to you. Chris.
This has been a life less Ordinary, the travel show
from your friends at the wishing Well at two forty
three nef Avenue in Harrisonburg. If you have any questions
on topics discussed today, please reach out to the wishing
Well online at the wishing Well dop biz or five
four oho nine oh eight twenty three thirty three. Past
episodes are available on the iHeartRadio app. And we'll see
(53:39):
again next Saturday morning at ten for a life less
Ordinary from the wishing Well
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