When Travel Gives You Lemons — How to deal with the unexpected
Sometimes things just don't turn out as planned. You miss a connection, the bus doesn’t come, The museum is closed, you make a reservation for the wrong date, . ... what do you do?
You look at it as another adventure!
We were on a Caribbean cruise on a small ship, a generator failed and we had to redock in St Lucia, missing a highlight of the cruise — the small islands of Guadeloupe.
Momentarily disappointed, and not wanting to redo the previous day’s activity, we thought about spending a day on the ship. But then we looked out from the deck - St Lucia was in front of us, See through water, sun filled, endless pristine beach, luscious vegetation. And we spied what appeared as organized cabanas jutting out into the water and a long group of deck chairs on the sand.
We asked the crew what it was — they said the Sandals St Lucien resort. We looked up their number, called their front desk, explained our predicament. The manager at the Sandals St Lucien reception could not have been nicer - they offered us a nominal day rate and we spent a glorious day lounging, swimming, sailing, eating at the Sandals resort! The grounds were gorgeous and everyone was so welcoming we definitively plan to go to one of their properties in the Caribbean.
Here’s another one - We recently spent a wonderful long winter break in Quebec at the Hotel Manoir Victoria. One day as we were walking out via the main reception desk, the friendly concierge (from whom we gotten excelllent restaurant recommendations) asked when we were checking out. We answered “tomorrow”, he gently told us it was “today”. Must have been a mistake we said, no as he showed us our reservation and told us the hotel was full. And indeed, we had messed up on the days and we had to leave - Mind you in the middle of 5 degree weather with a foot of dense packed snow on the ground and just before New Year’s — and with a hard to score reservation on our final night at the famed Continental restaurant.
We looked at each other and then the concierge told us to go and have breakfast and he would have something for us when we got back. We ducked into the French style bakery of the hotel, had two very large and steaming cappuccinoS and some pastries (Something sweet was needed for the soul). When we returned; the concierge had made several calls, miraculously found another hotel room around the block.
VaVenturing tips for turning lemons into lemonade:
Don’t panic! And don’t waste time on trying to assign blame. Mistakes happen.
Lay on the charm. The people most able to help will be far more responsive then if you get angry or offensive.
Be flexible. Most problems are fixable — make sure you have airbnb and hotels.com apps on your phone if you need to rebook a room. Also, make sure you have links to transport timetables and leave plenty of time between connections.
Use Hotel and airbnb safes and don’t walk around with all your valuables. It’s much easier to replace a single credit card and recover from the loss of a say $100 cash then to have to restore the entire contents of your wallet and passport.
Look for alternatives and more adventures. People (especially those in the hospitality industry) do understand unexpected changes in plans and are ready to suggest other options. And you get to sample even more of the place you were exploring - it’s all VaVenturing!
If travel gives you lemons - in Italy have a granita de limone or France a limon presse.
