Common travel mistakes to avoid! PART 2

Mistake #03: Not buying insurance
Although it may seem like an unnecessary expense, I strongly advise you to buy travel insurance before a trip. Recently I traveled to Mongolia on work. Unfortunately, Air China decided to leave my colleague’s luggage containing everything we required for our presentation the next day. No matter how much we pleaded with them, the airline would only send us our bag the next day in the evening, way after our presentation was over. If that wasn’t bad enough, I had to pay my tour company an additional USD 200 to send the misplaced bag to the remote town that we stayed in.

Right now, I am in the midst of trying to claim insurance. Luckily for me, I had the foresight the take out a plan, however, getting the money from the company in question is akin to getting blood from a stone, so fingers crossed.

Bottom line is, take out an insurance plan. Read the fine print, see if it is suitable and if the agent understands what you require and recommends something suitable for you and not for their commission. If your baggage gets lost, get a letter from the airline stating that they lost your baggage, keep your ticket, boarding pass and a list of the bags contents handy so you can furnish your insurance provider with these documents in order to make your claim.

Mistake #04: Using a credit card that charges foreign transaction fees
Take a good look at your credit card. Check the fine print in your cardmember agreement. Does it charge a “foreign transaction fee”? Many do. My neighbor booked airline tickets from Mumbai to New York through Qatar Airways on Expedia. But when her credit card bill arrived, it contained a surprise USD44 transaction fee, because Qatar Airways was not based in the United States, even though the transaction took place entirely in dollars. The best way to avoid a foreign transaction fee is to use a card like Capital One, which not only doesn’t impose any transaction fees, but also absorbs the 1 percent fee that Visa or MasterCard charges it for a cross-border transaction. Bottom line, call your bank if you are in doubt and read the small print to prevent any surprise charges.

( Central Shopping Belt continued)

MIDPOINT ORCHARD

220 Orchard Road

Nearest MRT station: Somerset (NS23)

Houses numerous outlets, including a hobby shop which sells sporting goods, gold jewelry, bridal gowns, fur coats and jackets.

NGEE ANN CITY

391 Orchard Road

Tel: (65) 6739 9323

Nearest MRT station: Orchard (NS22)

This massive centre which will take you more than a day to browse through, houses Japanese giant chain store, Takashimaya, and over 100 specialty stores retailing sports items, stationery, jewelry to designer clothes. Popular US Guess?, Hugo Boss Woman, Spain’s Zara and Mango fashion labels and Australia’s Country Road are just some of the many boutiques you would want to drop into. And when the shopping gets a little exhausting, revitalize yourself at one of the many restaurants and eating outlets, including the little Harrod’s tea room. Do drop by Kinokuniya, the largest bookstore in Southeast Asia. There’s also a full-facility sports centre, an art gallery and a culture centre you can visit.

Read more…

I read an interesting piece of news today about how Alaskan Airlines and Horizon Air are resorting to mobile services, in an effort to retain customer loyalty. The mobile services that these two airlines are currently offering are designed for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Mobile users and are hoped to improve their passengers travel experience and convenience.

These new services will enable passengers to make changes to their reservations, access airport information and potentially purchase tickets. Passengers can also check their flight status information, flight schedules, flight alerts and check-in 1 to 24 hours prior to their scheduled departure. Furthermore, passengers can use their “My Trips” feature to view their itinerary, change their seats, check their upgrade status and add an Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan number to their reservation. (for more information check out www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/database-crm/5632.html)

I believe that the more savvy Airlines are finally beginning to realize that with so many carriers and options available to travelers, retaining loyalty and repeated visits are becoming harder to achieve. Brand loyalty has been replaced by price consciousness thanks to the proliferation of budget carriers.

At last years WIT conference an ‘expert’ in the travel industry said that to retain customers, airlines and hotels need to offer more than just refurbished toilets and renovated rooms. What is missing is that little extra service that makes passengers and guests feel special and cared for. Being an ArrivedOK subscriber, I think the expert hit the nail on the head. Its no longer enough to offer the superficial trimmings that most hotels and airlines think us travelers require.

Instead, what we are actually looking for is convenience, and the knowledge that you care about how we feel. If an airline or hotel offered me the use of ArrivedOK FOC for flying or staying with them, I would consider traveling and staying with them during my next trip. Its those little extras, the intangibles that make us feel cared for, and that is what retains loyalty.

ArrivedOK now passes geographical coordinates of the travel destinations from its database to Twitter, so every arrival tweet is now geotagged, enabling your followers to see on a map the place where you just landed and have additional context when viewing tweets.

Though Twitter website does not display geotags yet, the growing number of third party applications does, for instance, such popular clients as Echofon, TweetDeck, Seesmic. Examples of other location-based Twitter apps are: Happn.in and Trendsmap.

Enabling geotagging in Twitter

By default the geotagging service is disabled for Twitter users. This means that you have to opt-in to sharing your location and this can only be done through the Settings page on twitter.com.

Follow these links right now to enable geotagging in Twitter:

mobile – twitter.com/account/settings/geo
desktop – twitter.com/account/settings

How it looks like

Now your ArrivedOK tweets will be geotagged and marked with an icon of some kind, depending on what Twitter app you use. Clicking the icon will open a map for you – in the app window or in your browser; some apps display Google Maps, some use Yahoo.

See below the example of Arrivedok geotagging in TweetDeck client. Happy landings!

ArrivedOK – “The Personal Flight Arrival Tracker” – automatically tracks your arrival at airports worldwide and instantly alerts your friends and family by SMS, email, via weblogs and social media – right at the moment you turn on your phone after the landing.
Visit ArrivedOK: Website | Mobile site | Facebook | Twitter

What media air travelers choose to inform their friends and relatives about their flights, provided with a choice between SMS, email and social media? See our latest stats on that topic.

ArrivedOK is the service that notifies your designated recipients about your arrival to airports worldwide. ArrivedOK doesn’t do this by tracking flights, it does it by tracking your cell phone when you switch it on in your destination. Once it has been detected as on in the visiting mobile network the arrival notifications are sent out automatically. Users can choose how to send those alerts – by SMS, email, or via social media/networks.

And here comes the interesting part – what media air travelers choose to deliver their arrival alerts? Our latest stats say that despite all that social media buzz, people still prefer SMS and good old email. Perhaps because email notifications are free of charge at ArrivedOK, one might say, but that’s not the case: ArrivedOK provides all social media alerts for free too but they show dramatically lower popularity.

Here is the percentage of all ArrivedOK arrival notifications by media channels (March 2009 – January 2010):

LinkedIn is not included in the stats as we just integrated recently.

One thing could explain the popularity of SMS among our users – ArrivedOK text alerts are remarkably cheaper than roaming text tariffs, but that does not explain the lower usage of social media services, which are completely free.

We would say that Twitter is doing fine, Facebook is overrated, and Blogspot and LiveJournal numbers reflect the decline of blogging.

This is basically European stats as we don’t currently provide the service in the United States and China (though we’re working on it).

ArrivedOK website – http://www.arrivedok.mobi
ArrivedOK Partnership – http://partners.arrivedok.mobi