Jenn's Travel Adventures

Since the travel world is still coming back from the extended pause it has been in due to COVID-19, I decided to write about some past experience.

I often get people who say that they could never take an escorted tour because it is to structured. I get it, escorted tours aren’t for everyone. However, I am going to use this entry to explain some of the benefits of escorted tours and maybe you may change your mind.

First, I don’t know about you, but I am not a morning person and especially not while I am on vacation. This can be a problem when you finally get moving in the mid afternoon as many countries tend to run on limited times such as 9-5 for many museums and/or attractions. This means that when I am on my own, while I may plan to see as much as I can, because I take forever to get moving I end up seeing half of what I wanted to see. When I have taken escorted tours, because I HAVE to be up and ready by 8 (sometimes earlier sometimes a little later) and because there are time frames for each attraction, I have seen more than I would plan on on my own.

Secondly, with escorted tours you can always add pre/post nights to the tour for seeing things not listed in the tour itinerary or to go back and spend more time if needed. This way you get time on your own AND the structure/discipline of the guided tour. This is great because sometimes the escorted visit to say a museum may be shorter than you would like so with a post night I have gone back and spent more time when needed.

Third, it is easier to budget and pay off your trip sooner with an escorted tour. When I travel alone, I have to remember that my hotel, car rental, attractions are all expenses I have to remember to budget for during my trip. However, with escorted tours, when I book say a year in advance, I pay a deposit and then when I get a tax return or extra income, I can pay towards the tour. Then once the tour is paid off (usually about 60 days pre trip), the money can be set aside for spending money. That is because your tour price pays for your hotels, transportation during the tour, almost always includes breakfast every day as well as some lunches and dinners, and admission costs for most attractions that are included in your itinerary. That means you just need to plan on the few meals not included, spending money for shopping, and any optional excursions.

Finally, not all escorted tours are huge buses or large groups. Many tour operators offer Small Group Departures with less than 25 passengers. These are great if you don’t like big groups or want to make more in depth connections with fellow travelers. I am still friends with people I met on tours I took to Jordan and Scotland because of the smaller group sizes and authentic experiences and connections we made.

So, hopefully when you think about these things you might be more open to considering escorted in the future. Oh and don’t forget with escorted you will also have a guide who speaks the local language and can help with free time suggestions from a local or knowledgeable perspective.

As always feel free to like, share, or contact me!

As you can see, the date of my last blog was several months ago. That is because Covid-19 and how it flipped my world upside down. Not just my world but the Travel Industry as a whole. Literally life as we knew it stopped and changed in an instant. Now some of the things I wrote about previously have changed too.

I think for my first post-Covid blog I will try to keep it short and sweet but with important information.

First, if you have a trip planned for 2020 and don’t feel confident proceeding with it, contact your travel agent and reschedule it for 2021. There are so many people’s livelihoods on the line that a rescheduled trip vs. flat out cancelling one can save. By postponing vs cancelling you are telling hotels, car rentals, tour and cruise operators, and more that you WILL use them just next year. This helps the people in charge know they will need their staff and hopefully keep layoffs lower.

Second, USE A TRAVEL AGENT! When this mess first hit, I can’t tell you how many people booked who had online or via big box stores to save a few dollars called ME for help because they were left STRANDED! With a Travel Agent you have someone to have your back, who will work hours on end to make sure your helped, and won’t leave you stranded. Not only that but my agency at least is making sure we all stay on top of industry changes and updates so that YOU stay informed.

Third, know that while things have changed, now is probably one of the best times to travel in terms of cleanliness. Think about it, hotels, car rentals, cruise and tour operators and more are investing in things like electrostatic sprayers, new filtration systems, and other CDC/WHO Recommendations to ensure they meet clean and safe protocols. This is huge because having worked as a housekeeper for a hotel in my early 20’s I am critical of cleanliness when I travel and knowing high touch items like throw pillow and key cards are going away, and electrostatic spray and new air filtration is coming makes me feel safer when I travel.

Finally, in the interest of keeping this informative but not super long, remember that having a vacation or trip to look forward too will help with other side effects of this pandemic like depression and work from home stresses. Even if you just book a short drive trip or a staycation for now it is something to lift your mood and give you something HAPPY to look forward to.

I will close for now but please feel free to message me with questions, like/friend my Facebook page, and find me on Linked In or Twitter.

This blog is called Jenn’s Travel Adventures for a reason. So far the entries have been useful info, but today (and long overdue at that) I want to write about one of my favorite trips I have been on so far. And that trip was this past September 14th-22nd, 2019 in Jordan with Club Adventures.

Club Adventures is a new tour company created by AAA based off of surveys members have filled out based on their previous tour experiences. They offer small groups of 16 or less people and guaranteed departures no matter how few or how many people have booked. They also make sure your guide/local leader is someone from that area and your hotels are owned and operated by locals as well. You can only book Club Adventures through an authorized AAA travel agent (which I am).

So why was Jordan my favorite trip so far? Because of my entire experience. From the moment we arrived in Amman, we were greeted personally at baggage claim, escorted through passport control, and taken to our hotel. That night we met our Local Leader Nasser who was by far the best tour guide I have ever had on a tour. He outlined our itinerary for us, we all got to meet each other, and then we all walked to a local Swarma place for some of the best food I have had while on vacation.

Nasser made sure to give us statistics about Jordan and factual information for the places we visited. Some of the highlights included: Staying in a tent camp in Wadi Rum desert (they filmed Aladdin and Star Wars there), Snorkeling in the Red Sea, Visiting Dana Nature Preserve, Madaba and the Mosaic Map, Bethany Beyond Jordan, Mount Nebo, the Dead Sea, and Petra.

Between the new friendships I gained from our small group of 14 to the places, people and meals we experienced, Jordan was a life changing experience for me. Maybe in a future blog I will go into more detail but since I want to try to keep my entries here short and easy to read, I figured I would do a quick entry about this amazing place, the unique experiences I got because of our tour group with Club Adventures, and how that all leads to this being if not my favorite trip of all my travels, then in the top two or three.

In 2012 I took a Trafalgar tour alone to see Scotland a year before I moved there for University. I did this so I could see the University but also so I could experience the whole country in case school wouldn’t allow me time to explore. I was one of only a couple of solo travelers in our group but I didn’t mind because being with the group made me feel safe, and having my own room allowed the introvert side of me to recharge.

Now as 2019 is coming to an end, solo travelers are actually the newest trend with travel. Particularly solo female travelers are big right now. This is cool for me as a solo female traveler, but some women or some solo men may still feel awkward about choosing to travel alone. This post will hopefully encourage those folks who are still a little hesitant about solo traveling to take that leap.

The Perks of being Solo…

While I do love traveling with good friends, and have a few I know I travel well with, there are a lot of perks to actually going on tours alone. Here are a few of my top choices:

• No trying to make different sets of dates work. By going alone, I can go when I want and where I want without compromising. Before I finally became ok with being a solo traveler, I missed out on some amazing travel opportunities because my companions could go when I wanted to.
• Tours are a great way to make new lifelong friends and feel safe being a solo traveler. It doesn’t matter if your a man or a woman, traveling solo is a surefire way to meet new people. I have friends on Facebook to this day from that 2012 tour that I still check in with. I even have a client how is booking is next solo tour with me to visit Scotland as he made friends with some folks from there during his solo tour of Spain, Portugal and Morocco last year.
• You can chose a room to yourself for slightly more cost, or volunteer to share a room with another person of your demographic and get the double rate. If no other solo person signs up, you get that room to yourself at the cheaper price.
• Solo travelers and escorted tours are a great pair. This way you don’t have to navigate driving in a foreign country alone, worry about if you are safe or not, and know you will see all the sights. You also know your lodging and most of your meals are covered too. Plus tours often only require a small deposit when you book your trip and give you until a couple moves before you leave to pay it off. This makes it easier to handle the costs of traveling solo.

Summary

These are my top reasons why I recommend solo travel and tours to clients. There are many more but I don’t want the readers of this post to get bored. Hopefully this post will help those reading it who have been afraid to travel solo, know it actually can be awesome.

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For this entry, I was prompted to write because of an interaction I had recently. A person came in and basically said “I want you to tell me what to do and where to go but I don’t want you to book anything for me because I will do that myself online.”

The internet is a great place for research. You can find almost anything you want or need to know online. In fact, for the situation above, I actually located three different blog entries from other online bloggers that do just what the person wanted. These blogs offered them suggestions of what they should see and where they should go for their chosen destination (all from a local persons perspective). This way I could still try to help them without losing too much time since they wanted to book everything themselves. I then offered to help them book any of the sightseeing or lodging suggested and asked they keep me in mind for future travel needs.

In the end, this person still decided to book everything on their own. When I asked them why, they stated it was because of AirBNB and a couple of other online only booking options they found.

As a travel agent working for a large agency, there are certain vendors that I can work with. Unfortunately, there are also other vendors that want you to book with them directly and don’t work with Travel Agencies. This is important to know because if your intent is to find bargain pricing by booking with one of these sites, I can’t do anything to compete with that. HOWEVER, if you want to know you are getting a fair price (maybe not the lowest possible price in comparison to the non agency vendors) you should check with me (or your current travel agent).

WHY?

• Because many vendors that DO work with travel agents will have promotions or incentives for you BECAUSE of the agency you book with that you can’t get online.
• These vendors may also be willing to work with your travel agent to offer price matching (there are certain criteria for this that your agent will explain).
• In Addition, at least with the agency I work for, all of the vendors we work with have been researched thoroughly to make sure they are reputable, honest, and reliable. This way if there are ever issues before, during, or after travel, we have contacts to work with to obtain a successful resolution for you.
• A Travel Agent can also offer advise and book other things you may not think about or be aware of like Travel Insurance (Many countries now require it), passport validity (passport shouldn’t expire until after 6 months from your trip return date), and much more.

SUMMAry

My hope is that after you read this post you will see that while booking yourself online may offer what seems like the best options, actually using an agent may be more valuable overall. There are some folks out there that are great with bargain hunting and finding the cheapest deal possible through an online only vendor. Kudos to you and keep doing what you do.

But for the folks who might have slightest reservations or uncertainty about online booking, may need advise in addition to booking, or want to know you book with a reliable vendor at a fair price, give your local travel agent a chance!

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So in my first post I mentioned standing in line for the TSA at an airport as part of why I decided to create this blog. The couple in line behind us was saying they were going to go and sign up for the TSA PreCheck program when they got home so they could avoid the long lines in the future. Hearing this I turned to them and asked “Well do you ever go out of the US?” and the husband replied “Yes we go to Canada”.

Why does it matter? What are these programs? Why apply?

Well, as I explained to that couple as we stood in that TSA line for over an hour, if you want to pay the $85 for the TSA Precheck (Good for five years) that is fine! BUT for only $15 more ($100 total as of today), you can sign up for the Global Entry program with US Customs and Border patrol which COMES WITH 5 YEARS OF TSA PRECHECK INCLUDED AND HELPS WITH THE CUSTOMS PROCESS WHEN YOU RETURN FROM INTERNATIONAL TRIPS!

To me, if you even THINK you may travel outside the US within the next 5 years, it makes more sense to do Global Entry. But, you don’t need to just take what I say as a why. Check out the sources directly:

Tsa PreCheck: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/frequently-asked-questions/how-do-i-apply-tsa-precheck

Global Entry: https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/global-entry/how-apply

Let me just leave you with this last thought on why Global Entry is worth the $15 more rather than just paying the $85 for TSA PreCheck.

When two of my fellow travel agents and I arrived at JFK after our trip to Amman Jordan this past September, two of us had to wait for Customs and Border patrol clearance. A process that took us roughly an hour to get through. Our friend Anne had Global Entry so guess what, she zipped right through, grabbed her checked bag plus each of our bags, and sat waiting for us!