I have yet to find a single travel club that’s worth joining. Some, if not all, are outright scams. The latest, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, are Only Way 2 Go Travel, of Plymouth, Mass., Fantasia Travel Group of Methuen, Mass., and Outrigger Vacation Club of Tulsa, Okla.
vacation
Connie Langdon is a pack rat. Especially when she’s on vacation.
After Terry Thompson’s daughter runs away from home, she cancels her Disney World vacation. But her travel insurance company refuses to refund $588 in airline tickets. Can’t Disney help? Mickey says it’s beyond his control. But is it?
The Udoviches Spring Break vacation to Fort Myers, Fla., just wasn’t meant to be. The family made it halfway from Texas to Florida before having to turn around, in part because of a late-arriving crew. Now they want their money back for the inconvenience, plus a travel voucher so they can re-do their trip.
Think this is bad? It could get worse. Much worse.
It might be something of an understatement to say that the ski trip that Victor Thomas and his girlfriend Susie took in Zermatt, Switzerland, two years ago, did not go as planned. On her first day on the slopes, Susie fell and shattered her lower leg. She spent the rest of her vacation in the hospital.
Mary McInnis-Efaw buys a package to Hawaii through United Vacations. But when the price of her ticket falls by $733, United refuses to offer her a voucher for the fare difference. Is it allowed to do that?
Erich Schuttauf is the executive director of the American Association for Nude Recreation, a group that represents clothing-optional resorts. There’s been a lot of talk about nudism in the travel world lately, from two highly-publicized incidents this summer in which disruptive airline passengers disrobed, to the groups efforts to coin a new term: the “nakation.” That’s right, folks. AANR has trademarked the word. Do nudists have an image problem? I asked Schuttauf.
Mari Ann Chaney paid for her vacation at Sandals in St. Lucia twice: once to her travel agent, which paid Watsonville, Calif.-based Happy Vacations, and again when she checked in.
Pop quiz: When Americans go on vacation, how do they travel?
Had a bad trip? No you didn’t. It wasn’t as terrible as these vacations, which come to us courtesy of the Titanic Awards site.
Remember Jerry Ginnis, the traveler who booked a Bermuda vacation online, only to have the reservation taken over by a travel agent? The original story provoked an outcry from the travel agency community, and a follow-up post did little to placate it. I didn’t name the travel agency in either post because I wanted to wait for its its side of the story. Well, the wait is over.
Jim Kohlman almost lost his entire vacation on a technicality. And he would have, were it not for the help of a hotel that understands the hospitality business.
We’re traveling down an uncertain road this year. Buckle up. “This kind of reminds me of the old sea maps from the 1300s that showed a coastline with the caption which read, ‘Here be Monsters,’” says Patric Douglas, the chief executive of Shark Diver, a tour operator in San Diego, Calif. “Trying to forecast this thing using any models from the past 20 years will be useless.”
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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