By Llazar Semini
TIRANA, Aug. 16 – Albanians should not not be fooled, and lied to by the travel agencies.
This is a personal experience which still explains a lot as the writer found other people suffering from the same bad luck.
During the last decade it is normal for a family in relatively good financial position to go to Turkey for vacations. That’s what I did, though this time with another travel agency.
I would really say that I failed in my desire for some good vacations and the reason is the ‘big game’ that the travel agency did with me.
It started with the change of the tourist resort from Lara near Antalya to a gold resort in Belek. That was done three-four hours after getting the first confirmation. Including the price with moved up from 3,090 euros to 3,900 euros.
At the airport I learned the same had happened with two other families, who were called at 4:30 in the morning to be told, just two and a half hours before going to the plane, that their destination was changed.
The drive to the hotel in Belek was a disaster, not really the driving but the area we were passing by. We, Albanians, do not miss views of the poor areas and we would not really like to see them while going to a luxurious resort where we want to forget everything we have suffered, let aside our annual sweat for some ‘bourgeois days.”
At the golf resort we did not find what we were told, the “top of our hotel list this year,” as Lady O. insisted to convince us for the change the hotel.
The same expression did not serve for another family coming at the same hotel two-three days after us, who immediately asked Lady O. to move them to a different hotel, or back home. I’m unsure of what they did but I did not see them again.
We had not paid that much money for that kind of resort.
We had to insist for two days to fix the air conditioning in the room. To be frank, the rooms (for the couple and the children) were the best we could find there. But when moving out of the room, there were again problems with air conditioning. Reaching the eating big room meant getting sweaty as the air conditioning did not work in all the areas.
And the food did not justify the money paid for it.
And the location meant we had to pay 100 euros for a round trip to the nearest town.
For ten days a year every tourist deserves not only to be ‘stuffed’ with food and isolated in one place, which is not such a great one.
Due to the pressure, the travel agency moved us to another hotel in another town. This time they did not fail. But this client who is writing had also to cope with the anger of Lady O. in the single call she made to tell the price increase with 150 euros at the new hotel.
The discussion reached to the point that “you are not my clients” though we had paid 3,900 euros (and 150 euros more earlier this week upon return).
My lady, I was your client and, frankly, I will never be one again.
There was no need to change the hotel, or to tell me that was top class. True Albanians are not that rich, say compared to you. But at the digital era anyone can see and check the difference or what it was looking for.
Wouldn’t it be better say the price is much higher at the other hotel and not lie to me.
We then moved to our Vlora, one of the best or most well-known hotels in the city. Well, we were expecting to have many problems, as we did have. But we were mentally or psychologically prepared to have such problems like lack of water, air conditioning or other small issues.
We did not expect to have problems with air conditioning or the food quality in a “top class” hotel in Turkey.
Albanians who serve to tourists will likely need many more years, a different mentality to change their behavior and really serve their clients. Or they will soon suffer reduced number of tourists.
Not officially confirmed but a few people in Vlora with hotels said they had noticed a reduced number of Kosovars and Macedonian Albanians this summer.
That will soon happen to our travel agencies that lie to their ‘spontaneous’ clients.
We had collected the money for a whole year long to pass some nice holidays, enjoy our kids and, of course, ourselves.
We managed to satisfy ourselves for only half of the holiday, or four out of ten days we had planned to. And that was totally due to the fault of the travel agency (which for normal ethical reasons I am not mentioning the name, though I believe Lady O. will read this article. I will try she gets a copy.)
I would call it lack of honesty, of proper management of the business as I am sure that was not intentional.
That will change only when such travel agencies or their managers understand the basic component of their business, if they want to keep on working in that business. Serving the client, the best you could, keeps the clients but also increases your profit. Not being honest with the client means getting rid of that one but, very likely, from many others.
That comes to the bottom line that Albanians should really take care of themselves, how they spend the money and check the credibility of the person or the travel agency they are dealing with.
