About Me

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Worcestershire, United Kingdom
I have worked in the travel industry most of my working life, owning my own agency for 14 years as well as working for travel industry suppliers. I wanted to share my life, my stories, my likes and dislikes with you and hopefully get some feedback from all of you out there in blogger world. I currently live in the Midlands, I am 45 years old and have two grown up children 24yrs and 19 years.

Tuesday, 26 June 2012

Gardening made fun make friends and get hints and tips from the experts



As many of you may or may not know cruise.co.uk/Victoria travel have been organising gardening tours for many many years.

I myself watched my father labour in the garden planting his veg and tending to his flowers since I was little but never really tried myself.
Over the last 12 months myself and my man have been trying to grow our own veg and try to be a little self sufficient and have had great success as you can see from the pictures above we now have a fabulous veg plot. We are still making mistakes but of course thats life and we have experienced a few failures here and there.

Now for those of you who enjoy their gardening whether it be flowers or vegetables what better way to spend your time having a relaxing cruise mixing with fellow gardeners and getting some all important hints and tips from expert gardeners on board who will share their experiences with you as well.

We still have some trips for this year and also an exciting new one for next year on sale flying to the Canary Islands.

      Balmoral – 28 August 2012 – Fjords – Gardeners’ World’s 21st Birthday Cruise
  Balmoral – 3 November 2012 – Canaries & Madeira20th Anniversary Garden Cruise for cruise.co.uk


Braemar – 7 September 2012 – Western Med Garden Cruise –

New 2013 promotion in Gardeners’ World Magazine – out now!

 Braemar – fly/cruise – Canaries & Madeira (Sun, Souks & Gardens) – 24 January 2013
 Includes:
·         Hosts – Will Giles & Matthew Biggs
·         FREE garden tour in Tenerife
·         FREE car parking at airport –
·         Exclusive on board Gardeners’ Programme

So why not join other like minded people on one of these delightful trips.


Monday, 18 June 2012

E- Ticket Blues



Last week I posted about excursion documents and how unfair it seems for cruisers who do not have the internet or printers...

This week I have received telephone calls from a number of clients struggling with printing out their
e-tickets..or finding information out about their cruise

Thank goodness we can print them out for them and send them else I think some customers would go out of their minds.

The problems are not just when clients do not have the facility to print themselves sometimes for whatever reasons the sites just dont seem to want to work when they should and frustrated customers
find that they cannot get the document to open at all,

Unfortunately technology can be too clever for its own good and customers who are OK using the internet get stuck when they are not sure that they have to allow pop ups or some computers seem
to protect them so well that they cannot fathom out what they are doing wrong...

All these things lead to so much frustration and people start asking if there is anyone they can book with who still send traditional tickets out. Unfortunely there are not many of these left...

I dont think that any of the cruise lines would revert back to traditional methods now , so we all have
to grin and bear it and do the best we can.

At least we are hear to help all our frustrated customers when they get into trouble on the world wide web.

Would you prefer to go back to traditional tickets let me know your thoughts...

Monday, 11 June 2012

Excursion Details if you dont have the internet!


I have clients who have just booked a P&O cruise, but on a special discounted price.

They want to access excursion information but neither of them have a computer at home and do not have family living nearby to print or show them the details. As they have booked a deal P&O will not be sending anything through the post.

Now as a company we of course have printed out the details and posted them to our clients to assist them, but I do feel sorry for customers when they feel helpless when they do not have the internet.

I do understand that in this day and age there are alot of people who have printers and internet at home, but there are still many elderly people who for them they feel it is not something they want to start to learn.

It can be stressful to clients when they worry about their tickets and on line check in especially
when for so many years they were used to receiving everything through the post.

I do wish that the cruise lines would still send excursion booklets regardless of the deal, as the
customers will be booking these and putting extra revenue in the cruise lines pockets so you wouldnt think that the few extra pennies to send them would make alot of difference, I am sure it costs more in
time and money for clients who call them worried or asking questions.

I know things will never be the same as they used to be but maybe a little help would be better than none at all.

What is your opinion on this ?