Codie's Corner: How to Handle a Vacation Gone Wrong

As a travel agent, it’s always nice to hear positive feedback and all about your clients’ perfect vacations when you send out a follow up after they return home.

The truth is, though, your clients’ vacations might not always go as planned, and hiccups may occur—flights get delayed, baggage gets lost and day trips get canceled due to weather and other unforeseen interruptions.

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People get sick, and hotels and resorts sometimes mix up room categories and put people in a pool view room when it was supposed to be an ocean view room.

It’s easy to get frazzled when issues arise, but it’s important for travel agents to be prepared when unexpected problems happen.

You don’t want to be caught off guard if a client calls you with a travel issue, so keep a list handy of all the clients currently traveling and ones departing soon so you know all the details of their trips. The last thing you want to do is go scrambling around your office looking for their information when you have them on the phone.

Often times when things go wrong, your clients are already on vacation. A lot of people have a hard time staying calm in stressful situations, so they may call you upset and frustrated. The best thing you can do is stay calm and be patient with them—even if they are pointing fingers at you before you even know what the problem is.

If whatever is going wrong is your fault, don’t try to play the blame game. Own your mistake, sincerely apologize and do whatever you can to make it right. There is usually always a way to fix the issue, and if not, there are several ways to make up for it.

This could mean rebooking them on a correct flight and covering the cost, booking them on another tour or day trip if one gets canceled or sending a bottle of wine or a sweet treat to their room or cabin. Even if whatever happened isn’t your fault, feel free to make things right and ensure the rest of their trip goes smoothly.

There’s always something you can do to turn your clients’ trip around, and sometimes it can end up being one of their most memorable vacations—and they will remember you were the one who saved the day.

When travel interruptions do occur, it’s always helpful for your travelers to have travel insurance. Share the problems that have occurred in the past when offering insurance to your clients in the future to ensure they have an insurance plan before embarking on their next trip.