What can go wrong on a tour - and how does this relate to the search aggregator

Hotel card in Turkey for 275 rubles per person per day. Price killed at least three.

“The tour was good, only in the pool half an hour swum zhmur. Turks say, you can swim, if not afraid. I pissed off, and our bathed. "

Let me remind you that 5 years ago it seemed to us that we are IT-specialists and we are doing purely IT business - a tour aggregator. Search, cache, compare, balance the reliability of suppliers, good data mining - that's all. But no. The reality surprised several times, and in the end we are still engaged in the tourism business, only a little differently.



As part of the Project Management hub, I will talk about what could go wrong on a tour that an ordinary person found through us as an aggregator (search) and bought the product of a tour operator.

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Since the purchase went through us, we answer at any jamb. And we are already shaking the tour operator and others involved. And I must say, it is very effective. An ordinary tourist has fewer chances for justice: besides the recall, he will not do anything to a tour operator, except that he rarely gets to court and breaks off after six months. And we have a very simple lever - we sell hundreds of tours to this operator and we can insist.



The stories below have been slightly modified for security reasons so that it is not possible to find specific people.

“When a high-class“ ubeykolenkenineusnichyu ”charter for a 9-hour night flight is substituted for a high-class hotel, even with a delay of a return flight of one and a half days, it somehow looks strange. I could have paid for the aeroflot, or I would have flown with a transfer, but I would have slept in the Cathar Dreamliner. ”

This is a classic story. The tour operator cheaply snatched a five-star hotel for half a year (as a rule, for one-tenth of the real price) and resold it for three-tenths from retail to tourists, and then began to collect the tour and found a suitable price for the charter, judging by the recall. It turned out that the tourists flew away very cheaply, they lived very cheaply in the steep hotel, but the attitude towards them in the hotel was traditional five-star (the staff do not really know who pays much, and the service is always up to par), but on the plane it’s conditional load. Super economy.



This is not a bug, but a feature of about half of the rounds. There is no need for intervention, but tour operators are still trying to take normal planes for long flights so that passengers can sleep. But this is not always the case.

"Three times they could not fly away, did not pass the border of the Russian Federation"

The most unpleasant case is when you are not released from the Russian Federation for debts. Most often, the tax debt in the region of 200 rubles comes up unexpectedly. At the border, you will be stopped and asked to pay all debts to the state. The problem is that their bases are synchronized slowly, and even if you pay directly from the phone (at the airport there is no means to pay on the spot), the information will come to them only after 24 hours at best. More often in three days. Accordingly, no one will fly away. One pair changed tickets three times, and as a result did not fly out. This is very disappointing.



Perhaps it would be time to do either a debt payment office in place of some kind or a special terminal. And learn how to count checks from it, and not focus only on your base. But no, the state works differently.



About not leaving: it is necessary to take a certificate at the customs. Then it will be possible to sue the bailiffs for failure to notify about the debt. There is difficult, long and with varying success. We can help to write an application to minimize losses, but it will be processed at the discretion of MOT depending on the deadline for submission. Tickets will not be returned, but the hotel - often yes.



It is better to check debts at least one week before going to nalog.ru on taxes, on state services on traffic police fines, on fssprus.ru on alimony and businessmen’s debts, and if the debt is to the bank - in the bank call center. In general, it is usually not necessary to call the bank, but it is better not to be lazy - there are a number of situations when this will help. For a year now we have sent a special letter about this and other items on the checklist before the trip to our customers.



Another tourist on the border found out that she would sit down. And sat down. Because she finally found.

“We arrive - there is no visa. They took the hotel at the airport. In 16 made a visa and went to the resort. "

The tour operator rarely forgets to make visas that are issued "in place", as in the Emirates (now it has already been canceled, this is an example). So, you need to apply in advance, and then get your visa directly at the airport. Tourists from the Republic of Belarus; arrived in the morning - there is no visa. More precisely, there is a visa, but the photo is not loaded. Called the operator, us. The operator paid for the emergency procedure, took the hotel right at the airport to the border zone. After lunch, the tourists were given a visa, they were released to the city, from where an individual transfer was delivered to the resort. Do not hesitate to call the tour operator, especially the major - they are accustomed to solve problems.

“They brought to the hotel at 9.00. Wonderful. Placed in the room at 14.00. 6 hours studied hall.

This is an unreal error, which you should immediately contact the tour operator. We arrived, but no settlement - the bell. The settlement was promised "now-now", and it took 3 hours - a complaint. Compensation is not always done, but very often it can be reduced not to money, but to a fruit basket, an increase in the class of accommodation or food, for example. In general, all such things need to be documented, then for serious shoals you can get compensation. If the purchase went through us, you can call not only the tour operator, but also us. It's one thing when a lone client is knocking on a big company, and another thing is when an affiliate company that sells hundreds of tours a day, explains to colleagues that the tourist needs help. By experience: sometimes, of course, everything still depends on a particular representative in the country of the tour (who is sleeping, for example, at this time and does not see calls), but somewhere in 70 percent of cases it helps.

“In the rooms are bedbugs. We were not absolutely ready for this. Changed 4 numbers. Other tourists buy mosquito repellents, not realizing that they are not mosquitoes bite.

The tourist is not the first in India, to their peculiar attitude to cleanliness and service is familiar, but the bugs have crossed all. There are no complaints either to the receiving party or to us: everything was clear, communicated politely, met, conducted without problems.



In many Asian countries, the attitude towards sanitation is peculiar. The principle is the same - before buying a tour, see the reviews. There is a generally accepted standard of the sphere: “Top Hotels”, a service where reviews are as relevant and real as possible, with good protection from any kind of markups. The only thing is the rating is there for all time, so if something happened in the hotel in the last month after a change in management, for example, you should not look at the rating, but at the text of reviews. And vice versa: if it became much better, you can not immediately notice.



And since we are an aggregator, then as a result, for each tour we aggregate reviews also from there to the hotel, and on the second tab we put feedback from our customers (there are fewer of them, but these are the data of those who were exactly in place).



By the bugs themselves: theoretically, it would be possible to collect a group claim after the fact, but this is difficult, time consuming, and tourists rarely do so. At a minimum, you should ask the guide for a claim form and fill in, record the fact of receipt of the claim (from the guide against painting). With regard to a single negative: here at the discretion of the tour operator, but to prove something is very problematic.

“The hotel didn’t have heated towel rails and the hot water was dirty and it smelled like that.”

Similarly. Get ready for local specifics. The correct model of behavior - right at the moment of detecting a problem, go to the reception desk and demand a solution. As a rule, they either raise the class of the room, or donate dinner, or do everything with you. If the problem is not solved, call and ask to change the hotel. The operator is able to do it. Why - the next item.

“We were evicted from the hotel for no reason, we demand compensation,”

As a rule, the hotel is very concerned about its reputation and the influx of foreign money. Therefore, for no reason at all - this is rare. On the other hand, knowing the modus operandi of most of our tourists on the “all inclusive” tours, one can guess what the reasons were, but the tourist did not remember them. Here, everything is exactly like this: the husband and wife celebrated the seven-year anniversary of the wedding, then the husband began to pester the girl-administrator of the hotel, slapped her on the ass (everything is fixed on camera) and for some reason knocked out the front door of the room when he could not open it from himself (she opened up by the rules of fire safety). Naturally, this is not a claim, but a huge thanks to the hotel and the tour operator. The first ones didn’t give way to the business, and they didn’t put the muzhik on;



In general, tour operators regularly change hotels to tourists, and this is a standard procedure. They also sometimes mingle with documents a little, but these are quite rare cases. Nevertheless, there was, for example, a story in the Maldives, when on the New Year the tour operator did not provide documents on the payment of a seaplane to the hotel (it is on a small distant island). It cost only $ 250, but the fact is not pleased. The tour operator included in the transfer tour, the hotel provided this transfer, but somewhere there was a problem. As a result, five days each morning for tourists began with a knock at the door and requests to pay for the plane. As a result, they phoned up on the first working day (I remind you - there was a New Year in Russia). It turned out that due to the bank’s work schedule for the holidays, the translation was stuck.

"Previous tourists smashed the room."

This is also a classic example of the history of the hotel and changing rooms. The couple ordered a honeymoon tour, got a room for the newlyweds. In the hotel, there was clearly someone who decided to play "The Bachelor Party in Vegas", and the room was absolutely unsuitable for living in the coming days. The hotel has only one room for the newlyweds. They were settled temporarily in a business suite, apologized, showed the same number after the fighting. Newlyweds called us and the tour operator. We helped to make a claim correctly, finished off the TO employee with a couple of calls. As a result, the couple were offered first compensation (they did not agree), then they changed the hotel to a slightly more expensive one and presented a chic romantic dinner on the beach. The couple was very pleased. Here it was our participation and the adequacy of the tour operator that worked - under an agreement with a TO, they could be settled in another room without compensation. If the tour operator rested horn, then it would have to understand already in the Russian Federation.

"In Egypt, almost lost a finger."

The tourist cut his finger, he was assisted in the village somewhere as much as they could, then his finger burned. Only then he turned to the insurance and asked the surgeon. In general, insurance cooperates with both private and city clinics. In their service centers there are doctors who can listen to the symptoms and immediately send them to a specialized clinic. Feel free to call them if you feel unwell - they can help at least with advice, are trained to give instructions for first aid (if you are stuck somewhere far away), and so on. Do not forget that you can change the clinic according to indications, there is compensation for transportation and maintenance (including with children, elderly relatives, severely ill and after serious injuries). You can get compensation for tickets. Call them more often. As a result, the tourist was operated on the finger and saved it. Two days later, would have to amputate.



Another characteristic case: a woman in a blistering woman came from an Asian country. She was "accepted" at the stage of crossing the border, they wanted to be in quarantine. Because the face is so interestingly swollen that another person has turned out. from the point of view of the border guard, not the same as in the passport. It turned out that there was an allergy: she recharged, bought a tube at the pharmacy, anointed herself, flew away. The doctor at the border quickly figured out, taken away from the airport immediately by ambulance. Lesson - if you feel bad, go to the hotel’s first-aid post, or immediately call the insurance office with questions.



In general, yes, tour operators are wrong, but tourists themselves are often good. Very often we are confronted with the fact that customers either cannot explain to the tour operator what they exactly want humanly (it is useless to do this “bumping”, but without details, the support service of the tour operator simply turns on protective reflexes and sends). Here the function of our support is not only that we know exactly the rights of tourists, but also that we can translate it into a language understandable to the tour operator (or understandable to their lawyers if the problem is serious). And it greatly speeds up the process.



The general principle is that anything can go wrong. Write down on paper (and in the phone, too, but on paper better) the phone numbers of the insurance company’s representative office, the tour operator (and if you took us through), a representative of the airline, the reception of the Russian consulate or embassy, ​​technical support of your bank, a couple of relatives. Most of this we send in a memo to the tourist before leaving - you should print it out and hide the copy in the baggage pocket, the copy in the jacket pocket. It is very important not to skip information on arrival - this is such a schedule where you can stock up on guide numbers (they are now almost all with votsap and telegrams, so you can not even call) and find out all the information. Guides immediately warn of possible inconsistencies and frequent errors in this direction.



Even if you are an independent tourist who bought a tour just because he and the whole hotel turned out to be cheaper than self-purchased tickets (for example, from Novosibirsk to Thailand there are 40 return tickets, and tours with a hotel and two flights - 30 per person), and you are not going to walk with the group at all, go away anyway or exchange contacts directly with the guide. Why this is important: there was a case when a tourist bought a tour, got to the hotel on a group transfer, and then spat on everyone, rented a car and drove off. Appeared only at the airport. But the flight was postponed 3 hours earlier and warned about it on the very first day at the hotel, from there they were taken by bus. This is the norm for charters. The guy ended up hanging out at the airport, then flew away with his own money.



And do not hesitate to call the tour operator and insurance for any suspicion of the problem. If the tour was made through us, so would we. We are unlikely to help fix everything on the spot (this is the tour operator should do), but we, like an aggregator, have developed two more functions:

1. We can call and, roughly speaking, give your ticket a high priority for the tour operator. I remember once I called the founder of the tour operator at night - it really helped me to solve everything immediately. Naturally, this is not a standard procedure.
2. We will immediately help you to get the documents correctly, fix the violation, etc., and make a legally significant claim to the tour operator or airline so that, at least, there will be compensation already upon return.

The correct treatment is:

• First tell (or call) the guide. He can quickly and clearly solve everything in place and in 90% of cases he helps with hotels, non-critical medicine and everything else.
• Then - the tour operator, they usually have their own line of support. It is necessary to prepare in advance the facts and how to check them. Much depends on the clarity of presentation and goodwill of the tour operator.
• If this did not help - the aggregator, that is, us.

And finally, two more reviews:

“Took all inclusive for 10 nights. I was afraid that it would be boring alone. But no. I took only the beads and panties.

"Everything is fine, thank you, but in the summer I will fly alone, rest with my wife is work."