Category Archives: Trip Reports

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TAP Portugal Airlines Removes Telephone Support, Now Only Provides Email Support (Travel Agents Only)

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UPDATE: Grant just confirmed with TAP Portugal on Twitter that this change is only for travel agents, not for passengers.  Sorry for the confusion.

A few months ago, I booked my first ever flight on TAP, the Portuguese airline. I called TAP and within a few minutes, I had my seats picked out and assigned. I haven’t taken the flight yet. The whole process was very easy. That’s ALL changed now.

Somehow TAP thinks that they’ll better assist me by NO longer offering telephone support. Strange reasoning, don’t you think? And their new process looks, well, confusing, to say the least. Not only are they not taking phone calls and only handling support through emails, but they have this wildly complicated construct of coding that we have to use in our emails to them. They don’t specify response time, and this whole email process is just ridiculous.

Here’s the full text of the email they sent.

Dear Valued Partner,

As part of our ongoing effort to improve our service to our customers we are implementing a Customer Relationship Management program to better assist you.

As of Thursday, July 27th, all Agency Help Desk assistance will be handled through email only. Telephone assistance will no longer be available so we ask that you submit all requests to tapusa@tap.pt. Continue reading →

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Conde Nast Traveler: Top 10 Zoos in the United States

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Do you and your family enjoy visiting zoos when you travel? If so, how many of the top ten zoos in the U.S. have you been to? A few friends sent me the same article, so I’m sharing it with you! Conde Nast Traveler recently ranked the top 10 zoos in the U.S. The San Diego Zoo came out on top, which is probably why my friends wanted me to see the rankings. I wasn’t surprised to see the Bronx Zoo in the top five, but to be honest, I had no idea some of these other cities had zoos. Who knew Anchorage has a zoo? I had a great time in Anchorage and am sorry I missed visiting their zoo.

Here is the rest of the top 10 zoos from the article. What do you think of Conde Nast’s rankings. How many of the zoos have you been to, and are there others you’d add to the list?

  1. San Diego Zoo, San Diego, California
  2. Indianapolis Zoo, Indianapolis, Indiana
  3. Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle, Washington
  4. St. Louis Zoo, St. Louis, Missouri
  5. Bronx Zoo, New York, New York
  6. Living Desert Zoo, Palm Desert, California
  7. Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Columbus, Ohio
  8. Alaska Zoo, Anchorage, Alaska
  9. Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, Omaha, Nebraska
  10. Brookfield Zoo, Brookfield, Illinois
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Has the Dalai Lama Stayed at your Home Hotel? He Stayed at Mine!

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Have you ever wondered which hotels famous people, dignitaries, or important international figures choose to stay in? I don’t usually ponder these questions, but recently, I had an experience that DID get me wondering. I hope you’ll enjoy this story about His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, staying at MY home hotel.

I’ve seen the Dalai Lama in person twice. Once was 20 years ago when he gave a talk in NYC. Then I saw him again 6 years ago when he gave a talk at the University of Hawaii. Earlier this year, the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) reached out to the Dalai Lama and asked if he’d give the commencement speech at graduation, and much to everyone’s surprise and delight, he accepted this invitation. So in mid-June, the Dalai Lama was in San Diego.

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Image source: http://commencement.ucsd.edu/

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How to Avoid Common Mistakes when Booking Airline Tickets

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Recently, my aunt sent me an article she saw online about mistakes people make when booking flights. The article was geared towards people who use cash for flights, though it did mention award tickets as well. Even though I prefer and mostly use miles and points for flights, I took a look at the article to see what it had to offer. And I also was curious to see if any valuable advice in that article was already offered here at TWG! It was, but they also left out one important piece of advice, geared to us miles/points folks.

The article talked about using the ITA Matrix Tool, which is a search engine tool for checking ticket prices. Grant did an extensive write-up and it’s a great tool to familiarize yourself with, whether or not you pay cash or use miles/points for tickets. The article warned people to always search multiple area airports when booking a ticket to see if fares change. That’s good to remember, whether using miles/points or paying cash. After all, New York has six airports! Positioning for a flight when you do use out of area airports is a topic I’ve talked about too.

The article encourages people to be flexible when booking both award and paid tickets. It says to use the calendar search function on the different airline websites and to try and catch some spontaneous travel deals as well. The last mistake the article talks about is making silly errors. We’ve all heard about people who mistakenly booked a flight to Portland, Maine, (PWM), when they meant to book a flight to Portland, Oregon, (PDX). Another mistake that’s easy to make is to not pay attention when a flight departs. We want to see 1pm when we make the flight choice, but it actually says 1am :(

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AutoSlash Newsletter: Is your Rental Car Company Spying on You?

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I don’t know about you, but I would say on a scale of one to ten, I’m probably a ten when it comes to protecting my privacy. I like to know who is gathering information about me, what information they are gathering, and how they are using it. Even if you’re not very high on the privacy scale, this article by AutoSlash (Is Your Rental Car Spying on You? The Story of Connected Rental Cars) is a great read. I like many of the articles that appear on the AutoSlash newsletters because the AutoSlash team is insiders while not actually being a rental car company themselves. I think they do an excellent job of educating consumers, like you and me, on a wide variety of topics related to renting cars.

a blue car with orange wheels

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