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Mary Tyler Moore once said, “Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.”

Nobody likes to admit they made a mistake, but, like Moore said, failing isn’t always a bad thing.

“Let's face it, no company is perfect - we work with people who are imperfect so mistakes are bound to happen,” said Judith White, a romance travel expert with White Sand Travel. “I always say, the way we handle the mistakes separates the ones of us that have customer services at the heart of our business.”

White tells the story of a young lady who was on a budget and trying to vacation with eight of her friends - on a $800 per person budget. “I really didn't want to book the trip as romance travel is my niche but she kept calling me,” said White. “The soft, caring part of my heart won and I agreed to help her.”

Hours and hours and hours of work and cancellation after cancellation later, White and her client are ready to book the trip but funds were down to the penny.

“They settled on the Live Aqua and stretched the budget to $1,000 per person and they made their deposit,” said White. “But I booked them at the Live Aqua Lat20 instead of Live Aqua and didn't realize until the ticket agent pointed it out. Problem is, Live Aqua is significantly higher - to the tune of $1100.”

White buried her face in her hands and fessed up to her client. “I admitted my mistake and I came up out of pocket and coughed up the $1100,” she said. “Everyone thought I was absolutely nuts, but it was not so much that I made the mistake. It was that I couldn't rob these young people of the trip they had their heart set on. I was responsible for booking the wrong resort. How could I make them pay for a mistake I made?”

Samarah Meil of the Amarillo Travel Network also experienced a situation where she was in the wrong.

“I once booked a high school group on the wrong dates for their outbound flight and did not catch it until the airline had ticketed the reservation,” she said. “I had to work with the airlines group department and fix the situation. It did cost me out of pocket, but was more than happy to fix it and still do travel for this group to this day.

Meil said that it’s hard to admit that even as a travel professional you can make such mistakes, but the key is to be honest with your clients and do what you can to make it correct.

“That was a very humbling and a costly mistake,” she said.

Have you ever had a situation where you were in the wrong? What did you do to make it up to your client? 

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