Travel Mishaps – When Travel Goes Wrong

I hear a lot of travel horror stories about when travel goes wrong. Flights can be delayed, bags stolen, and your hotel may end up being like Fawlty Towers! But many of these can be avoided or made less stressful by applying the following advice on how to deal with travel mishaps.

I’ve been travelling regularly for over 20 years, and have experienced my fair share of travel mishaps. I once arrived in London, and my bag was somewhere lost in Frankfurt.  It took them 3 days to find it.  But luckily my insurance kicked in after 24 hours, and allowed me to buy a whole new wardrobe – bonus!  My bag arrived safely a few days later. Travel can go wrong for anyone, the trick is to minimise the collateral damage.

Common Travel Mishaps:

Flight delays or cancellations

There is little you can do to avoid flight delays and cancellations – weather can turn bad, strikes happen, and delays at other airports can have a knock-on effect.  It is the way you deal with these issues that can be the difference between a good or bad experience.

Buy travel insurance

Be sure to buy travel insurance, and make sure it covers extreme flight delays or cancellations. This can be used to secure new hotel bookings and cover any loss of previously booked hotels.

Be prepared

Check for delays, cancellations and airport news via the airport website before you leave for your flight.  If in doubt, it is always best to ring the airline.

Make sure that you have a book or tablet, mp3 player, and money for magazines / snacks in your carry-on.  Don’t forget to bring the chargers too!

Lounge access

If you have to re-book onto a later flight, and have lounge access; try talking to the crew in the lounge to see if they can re-book you instead of having to wait in the queue with 200 other angry passengers.

I once got stuck in Geneva due to a train strike. But with the help of a free wifi hotspot, I managed to check my insurance documents. I then used my booking.com and easyjet.com apps to book a flight for the following day; and book a lovely last minute hotel deal in Geneva. Best advice I have is to just stay calm and work methodically through your itinerary to re-plan things.

Resolving Hotel Issues

Sometimes hotels appear way better in the photos than they do in real life!

• Before booking a hotel, read the reviews and ask around for advice – booking sites should always have a review section, and if it’s empty, do a quick internet search for reviews to double check your choice.
  

• Always keep your hotel details accessible on multiple devices and/or in multiple places – what if your phone is lost and you can’t remember where your hotel is?
  

• If the hotel isn’t up to scratch, it is imperative that you deal with it on the spot – don’t endure the pain and then complain about it constantly once the holiday is over.  Calm yourself down (if needed), and head down to reception to ask for the issue to be resolved.  If the person on reception can’t help, ask to speak to a manager.
  

• If the hotel can’t solve the problem (perhaps because the hotel is full and they can’t move you), then ask for you to be compensated on your bill.  Your last resort is to call their head office, or to tweet them.  Never underestimate the power of social media (but don’t abuse it – give the hotel a chance to fix the issue before resorting to complaints online).

Theft or Loss

Sometimes your luggage doesn’t arrive in your final destination, or you are unlucky enough to get your bag stolen. So, here are some tips to prevent or deal with those scenarios:

• Keep a copy of all your travel documents, and scanned versions of your IDs in the cloud, or in an email account that’s accessible online.  If your documents get lost or stolen, having copies securely saved can help during an emergency.  It is also worth keeping a record of your local consulate, incase you need a replacement passport.
  

• Always take 1 change of clothing in your carry-on luggage – if your hold luggage doesn’t end up in the same destination as you, at least you have 1 change of clothes to last until your hold luggage arrives, or your travel insurance kicks in!
  

• Make use of the hotel safe – leave some of your cash and your expensive possessions in the lockbox rather than carrying them with you.
  

• Back up your phone to the cloud, so that if your phone gets lost or stolen, you can download your contacts / apps to a new phone immediately, from wherever you are.
  

• Don’t keep all your credit cards in one place.  It’s called minimising risk!
  

• Consider using a travel card, rather than carrying cash.  New travel accounts like Starling and N26 can be used around the world with good exchange rates and no fees!
  

• Minimise your exposure to pickpockets. Don’t use a backpack or a handbag with no secure clasp or zipper; and never keep your wallet or phone in your back pocket.
  

• Don’t stand on a street corner reading a map.  Luckily, these days, you’re more likely to be checking google maps on your phone.  But the principle remains – try not to look lost.

Keep Calm

Never underestimate the power of keeping calm when things go wrong. In the world of ‘karens’, losing your cool is a dangerous game. It also doesn’t get the best results. Diplomacy is far more advantageous!

Try not to take out your frustrations on the ground crew, hotel staff, or customer services reps – they are just doing their jobs.

If your flight is delayed, find yourself a comfy seat, log onto the free airport wifi, and try to be patient.  If this affects your onward travel; then I suggest using this time to let your car hire company and hotel know that you’ll be late.

I always say ‘if you have a credit card and your passport, it’s not the end of the world’!

Say Farewell to Travel Mishaps

The thing is, travel mishaps can happen at any time, to anyone. The moral of the story is to take measures to minimise the impact, so you can get on with enjoying your holiday. And while it’s easy to say that when the pressure is off, if you prepare in advance and keep that problem-solving head on your shoulders, you will manage.

Read about the time I accidentally took a photo of a deal going down in Naples…

All photos & content © Hannah Henderson and may not be used without permission (sharing this blog post is fine, though!).