Have you ever made a stupid mistake when making travel reservations? Once you hit a certain level of travel, you’ll inevitably have this happen to you. Mistakes happen and there’s no feeling like realizing that you booked your flights in reverse order, for the wrong day or to the incorrect airport (I’ve even done this one.) You can also do dumb things like renting a car in the wrong city or even showing up at the hotel you thought you booked when you actually reserved a room at a similarly named property on the other side of town.
Sometimes your error is explainable due to some less than truthful marketing tactics, like when Melbourne International Airport insists on adding “Orlando” to its name, even though it’s a 70-mile drive between the airport and the city.
However, most of the time the blame falls all on you.
You can only hope that a customer service agent has pity on you and helps you resolve your error, often with very little time to spare. You might have to pay extra to straighten things out but that’s the price you pay for not paying attention.
This is why I have a strange obsession with the Four Seasons story. You know the one, where a major political press conference was announced at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. Shortly thereafter a corrected message told people that the event was not happening at the hotel but Four Seasons Total Landscaping, located in an industrial area outside the city.
It takes a certain something to go on with the event, making it look like this was exactly what you planned all along. That’s like thinking you’re booking a trip to Paris, France and ending up in Paris, Texas. Nothing against Texas; it’s just not what you had in mind when you were making your plans and the months of learning French will have much less value. (Kidding, you don’t have to learn French to visit Paris.)
Enough time spent thinking about this. Let me get back to my travel plans. I hear Jamaica is beautiful this time of year.
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Cover Image by Bruce Emmerling from Pixabay
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
4 comments
I do not think this one was a mistake
So did Giuliani think he was booking the hotel? Repubelickers trying to say they booked the landscaping joint because it is in a blue collar part of philly.
Outside chance he got banned due to Borat so had to rebook to save face.
Like your last statement in this article. Yes, many, many months ago we were thinking of traveling through Jamaica in November to stay in NYC over Thanksgiving. Luckily, we hadn’t booked anything already, because then came corona.
Well, anyway, it is really hard to imagine how one can mix up these two Four Seasons. It’s not just typing four seasons into Google Maps, not reading what is being autofilled and then rely on that computed route. When planning to held a press conference somewhere you need to contact that property before, right? Make any reservations. So they faxed the wrong one and they said, “Sure”. And still not noticing that this isn’t a hotel at this point.
In fairness it was planned at the landscape company all along as they are strong Trump supporters. The communication is what broke down. Like telling someone you are going to NY versus NYC.