The Amateur Travel Agent

Brenda works for Holiday Travel, a travel agency in a large midwestern town. Over the past several years, as the Internet grew, Holiday Travels showed a commensurate decline in sales. The agency still had a loyal following of primarily older customers who relied on its services for everything from booking airplane trips to planning extensive vacations. It also still did a lot of work with travel wholesalers, putting together packages for a variety of locations. In many ways the Web had made Brenda's job easier, as there was a vast amount of information available at her fingertips. However, as customers had become more sophisticated, they were handling much more of their travel needs by themselves. Some customers would put together their own travel packages on the Web and then challenge Brenda to beat the price or improve on accommodations for the same price.

Brenda had one such customer, Susan Lewis. Each year, Susan and her husband and children took at least one substantial vacation, and sometimes two. They had gone on Alaskan cruises, train trips through Germany, and, most recently, a three-week trip to Thailand. Up until the past couple of years, Brenda and Susan had worked together in planning these trips, and then Brenda would make all of the arrangements, which was how she earned her commissions. Over the years, Susan and her family had encountered very few problems in their travel, and whenever anything went wrong Brenda had been able to provide a solution.

For this year's vacation, Susan had spent many hours surfing the Internet to explore options. She and her children had sat around the computer in the evening, looking at websites for hotels in many destinations. When they finally decided that a trip to Bali and Australia was what they wanted, they began to focus on details for their itinerary. They decided that they would visit Cairns, Brisbane, and Melbourne in Australia and stay in Candidasa, Tulamben, and Ubud in Bali. Susan again spent hours looking at hotel websites, e-mailing to get information, and checking the discount airline websites. She finally was able to complete a three-week itinerary, including transportation and accommodations. Before booking anything, Susan went to see Brenda to see if she could do any better for her. Brenda was not very anxious to take on this task, but agreed to see what she could do. Several days later she called Susan and told her she had come up with a similar itinerary, but the cost would be slightly higher. She also told her that she was unfamiliar with most of the hotels that Susan had chosen, but was familiar with the ones she had selected and could recommend all of them with confidence. Susan thanked Brenda and said that she would go ahead and make her own arrangements. She did so and felt very proud of herself for being able to navigate the technology and for saving more than $1,000. As she was making her reservations, she found that all of the flights were nonchangeable and non-refundable and that because she and her family would be traveling in high season, several of the hotels required a substantial, nonrefundable, deposit.

Their travels through Australia went smoothly, and they were very pleased with their accommodations. The weather was beautiful the entire time. When they arrived at the airport in Kuta, Bali, they were slightly taken aback. All of the people were very nice, but things seemed a bit chaotic. They were able to find a taxi to the seaside resort near Candidasa, where they would be spending their first several nights of this leg of the trip. When they arrived, they were immediately disappointed. The resort had very little resemblance to the pictures presented on the website. They had booked two adjacent oceanfront villas, one for Susan and her husband and one for the three children. There was only one villa near the beach, and it looked nothing like the pictures they had seen on the website. It was late in the afternoon, so they had no choice but to stay there for the night. They were checked into two villas, one close to the main building and one above it on the hillside. The next morning they immediately began to search for options. There was a lovely small resort located less than a mile down the beach that had room for them, but it was very expensive. They decided to make the move, and when they went to check out, they asked for a refund as they had prepaid for three nights. The manager refused their request, stating that he had turned away customers who would have taken those two nights. It was obvious that other the resort was not fully occupied, so that could not have been the case. Feeling they had no recourse, they left, but vowed that they would pursue the issue. The rest of their visit to Bali was very pleasant, but they were still angry.

Upon returning home Susan called Brenda and explained the situation. They had spent almost $1,000 for the two nights they did not use and an additional $1,600 for two nights at the other resort. Susan wanted to know if there was anything Brenda could do to help her get her money back.