Website Enhancements

As of today, I have added live chat functionality to both of my websites. If you're on either legacytravel.com or wildtraveldeals.com you can just click the live chat icon and speak to a professional travel agent.

More Later!

Why you need a travel agent....

Typo Takes Tourist 13,000km Out of His Way. Apparently, this guy typed the wrong city into the web booking engine where he bought his ticket. No way this would have happened via a travel agent. I'm not saying we're perfect, but a mistake of this magnitude would just not have happened.

Also, we keep getting phone calls of people this week from people who are booked on ski trips. Ski trips..you know, where you have to fly into Denver Colorado where they are "enjoying" the 2nd blizzard in 10 days? The Denver Colorado where thousands of people "enjoyed" the accomodations of the floor of the airport for nights at a time last week? The funny thing about the calls we're getting is that they are from people who booked their trips online (not with us). They are stuck because they can't get through to anyone at the airline and they don't have an advocate to help them.


If you don't book with an agent, you're on your own!

A Very Geeky Christmas To All

I hope you are enjoying this cozy season. I think this part of the year is magical even if just for the fact that just for a few hours tomorrow the capitalism machine grinds to a halt and we are able to take a short breath.

Whatever holiday you celebrate, I wish you a great one. Around Casa de Banks, we celebrate Christmas. I am blogging to you from my home where I am in front of the fireplace with my wireless laptop, just like in the days of yore. Nearby is the shorter of our two Christmas trees. An 8 foot Loblolly Pine, it displays a large number of home made and family ornaments and is adorned with colored twinkly lights. In the front living room there is an 11 foot pine tree whose exact breed I cannot remember at the moment. That tree has the Hallmark ornaments that used to belong to my mother and is adorned with white non twinkly lights.

On the television is the DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket. My husband is watching 8 games at once. How is it that he can keep up with eight football games at once and can't seem to remember something I tell him for 15 minutes?

I'm using this quiet afternoon to tinker with some things on my websites that have needed tinkering. I am proud to say that I have just figured out how to alter the search feature on Wild Travel Deals so that the user can select to see ALL of the deals out of his/her gateway rather than having to choose a specific one. (I had to utilize an "if/else" statement, for the information of my fellow geeks.) Also, I added a deals search page to the hot deals section of Legacy Travel.com Here it is if you want to check it out.

I hope you're enjoying your Christmas Eve, no matter what you're doing. I hope you're where and with whom you want to be.

Blank Check

Have you ever given anyone a blank, signed check? Of course you wouldn't give one to just anyone. Blank checks should only be given to the most trustworthy individuals. A blank check in the wrong hands leaves the door wide open for a disaster. If I give you a blank check I am vulnerable to the consequences of YOUR actions and choices.

Lately I have been contemplating how, when we choose to love someone, we are basically giving the world a blank check. This blank check can't be protected. You can't keep it under lock and key, you can't assure it won't fall into the wrong hands. Either by carelessness or malice, this blank check leaves us vulnerable.

If you know me or have been reading this blog for a while you know that my mother passed away about two and a half years ago. I am just now starting to feel energetic and happy again. This is the first Christmas where I have pulled out all of the decorations and am truly enjoying it rather than just very laboriously going through the motions of holiday obligation. Grief is hard. It took the wind out of my sails for a long time. I still miss my mother very much, but my soul is finally starting to really understand that she's gone. For the longest time, that she was gone was this massive incongruency that just wouldn't compute.

I don't ever want to go through that again, but I know I will. Such is the nature of life. If you love, you're going to grieve. Grieving doesn't just happen when someone dies. Grieving also can happen when someone you love is hurt, or when someone you love hurts you.

This is especially true when you love a child. I've often told pregnant friends that once you have a child it is as though your heart walks around on the outside of your body from that day forward.

I am especially mindful of it right now because in six short days my daughter will take off for a destination 5285 miles away from me. She'll be gone for almost a month. My anxious imagination is going wild. We've taken every precaution. We're comfortable with the arrangements of the trip. We're very happy she has this opportunity. She has worked very hard to be able to go. She'll be having an amazing experience.

Me? I'm looking forward to looking back on it. I like to keep my blank checks a little closer to home.

Ummmm....Maam?

You put your baby through the Xray machine...

Now that's taking security a little too far...

Easy?! Sure!

“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” - Gene Fowler

....the same is true of blogging

So, today I bring you a several tidbits:

1) Before leaving home, check the TSA website to see how long it has been taking to get through security at your airport. Also, make special note of the security checkpoints listed with longer wait times. Especially at our hometown airport, DFW, some checkpoints are more frequented than others even though they all lead to the same place. Pay attention and perhaps shave a few minutes off of your wait time.

2) Delta has rejected US Airways hostile takeover bid. That is good news for consumers...I hope Delta is able to emerge from bankruptcy as an independent carrier.

3) Our U.S. carriers may have a harder time making a profit since deregulation, but at least the government doesn't interfere with pricing like this one in China. Evidently an airline is being fined big bucks for selling tickets at too low a price.

Merry Christmas!

(or whatever you celebrate at this time of year...at the Banks home, it's Christmas..)

Inside the Bottle Syndrome

As I mentioned before, I'm reading Waiting For Your Cat to Bark. On page 30, the authors introduce a concept called the "Inside the Bottle Syndrome".

"On a day-to-day basis, we are all wrapped up in the most pressing needs of our jobs or businesses. And the needs most pressing, unless we have direct contact with customers, are the ones right in front of us at the moment."

I am very glad, that even after 18 years of owning this agency with Philip, I am still in daily contact with customers. It is challenging, balancing being available to work with customers while still keeping up with building my websites, marketing them, raising my kids, training our staff, sleeping.... Challenging, but also exciting.

I do encounter people within this industry (and I am not even talking about other agents or agency owners) who are so far removed from the consumer that they really don't understand the impact of their actions on the consumer. One of our vendors seems to have challenges in keeping their booking system working properly and consistently. They don't seem to understand that when a consumer is ready to book..they're ready to book now and if I can't book with this particular supplier, I still have to find a way to deliver NOW.

One place I do struggle with the "Inside the Bottle Syndrome", is in advertising...particularly Internet advertising. I've been doing this for so long that I don't know what consumers search for when they search for trips. What search terms do you use for the various types of trips? What do you expect to see on a page when I'm advertising a certain deal?

Anyway, that's enough rambling thoughts for the evening.

More Later.

What do you want to hear about?

Okay, I admit it. I'm fresh out of ideas. I hope, by now, that you know that I have a podcast. Weekly, I bring to you an interview with some compelling personality in the travel business. I am able to get a big stock pile of recordings put together when I'm on a trip. Well, I just published the last one I currently have recorded. So...who you do want to hear from next? I have the equipment to record even a phone interview, so as long as I can get them on the phone.....

Suggestions?


In other news, my brother has a blog. Don't believe anything he says about me.

Finally, there is much talk in the media right now about consolidation in the airline industry. this article talks about how this trend will affect the consumer. Incidentally, it isn't good.

I hope you are enjoying a happy holiday season. Take a trip, you need it.

An Oasis of Peace

The last 10 days have been somewhat frantic. I've been in the midst of baking almost 40 cakes to distribute among various teachers and administrators at my kids school. That means that over the last two weekends I try to crank out at least 10-15 cakes, and on weeknights I have to make frosting and frost and package three or four per night. We are delivering them throughout the month of December until school break starts next Friday.

I am sick of chocolate cake and frosting. I am sick of wiping cocoa and confectioners sugar off of my countertops.

Add to that that we are, I think, having our busiest November and December on record at Legacy Travel. This is due, in large part, to the success of that large project I undertook in the fall. The upkeep of that project continues to take up a significant amount of time. I love the work. I find it very interesting. Best of all I am getting results, but I am up late most nights working.

Also, we're having Christmas at our house this year. I am very excited about it. Excited and busy. We have two Christmas trees this year because our new house has two different places that just scream out to have trees. Also, we now have too many ornaments for one tree. Not quite enough for two mind you...but too many for one. The house looks nice and Christmasy.

My wonderful inlaws are coming for the big day. My wonderful thoughtful Mother-In-Law has thoughtfully suggested that perhaps we could go out for Christmas dinner. It's a wonderful idea, but this is the only day all year that I get to cook such a big special meal for so many people. I will be busy and worn out, but I enjoy doing it.

So, to summarize. Life is busy right now. Busy and exciting and satisfying and wonderful.

More Later.