what people ask this counter before they send a date
Reserve a vacation package with no fee to this office: twelve questions asked at the counter
Twenty-six dated departures stand on the board for the year, from $1,615 to $4,855 per person, and this page holds the twelve questions people send before they pick one. Each answer is the one given here out loud, with the deciding company named where a company other than this one decides. Requests are answered within one business day.
You can reserve a vacation package with no fee to this office, and that goes first because it is the question that arrives most often, usually phrased as a suspicion. Twenty-six dated departures run through the year at this counter, from $1,615 to $4,855 per person, and each belongs to the company that operates it. Your place on a chosen date is reserved in your name, and the operator settles with this office long after you are home.
The twelve answers below are the ones given on the telephone, in the same words, including the several that are a flat refusal. Where the operating company decides a thing rather than this counter, the answer says so. the board with all twenty-six dates is the list all of them point back at.
Does anything come out of my pocket for this office?
Nothing, at any point. You will find no checkout anywhere on these pages, no field asking for a card, and no deposit taken here. The company running the departure invoices you on its own terms and settles a commission with this office weeks after you are back. Worth spelling out what that arrangement does: money only reaches this side once you have gone and returned, so putting somebody on a departure that will disappoint them earns nothing at all.
Will you get me the flights, or a berth on a ship?
No. Neither airfare nor sea passage is sold from here, and no agreement exists between this office and any airline or shipping line. Nothing on these pages should be read as an undertaking that a seat or a cabin can be got through this office. Several of the departures do spend time afloat, and on every one of them the company running it holds that passage under its own licence and invoices you for it. Reaching the country in the first place is yours to arrange, which is why each departure page prints what that leg tends to cost, so the figure on the board is not mistaken for the whole bill.
Suppose a fixed date never fills. What then?
A board of dates raises this and a list of destinations does not, so it deserves a straight answer. Each departure carries a minimum the operating company needs in order to run it. Where a date falls short, that company decides and this office does not: it will either go ahead at the published figure, move you to the next date, or release you with everything you paid it returned under its own terms. Which of the three applies is put in writing before you commit, along with how late in the day that decision is allowed to come.
Is the name over the door a newspaper?
It is not, and saying so is worth the line because the name invites the thought. Nothing is published from here, no opinions are held that anybody would want printed, no grades are handed out and no order of merit is kept. What happens here is narrow: a request arrives, the company that runs the departure is found, the reservation goes in. None of these pages reviews anywhere.
Are you a carrier, a broker, or somebody who answers calls for other firms?
None of the three, and each denial stands on its own. No vehicle, vessel or aircraft is moved by this office and no driver takes instruction from it. No transport is brokered and no traffic is allocated. And nothing here answers calls on anybody else's behalf, routes them onward, or stands ready around the clock for anybody: this is one room that takes booking requests during ordinary working life and puts reservations with the companies that operate the trips.
Do you handle cover, or advise on visas and passports?
No to every part of that, and the refusal is not about price. Cover of any description is neither sold, arranged, recommended nor commented on here, and the same goes for visas, passports and permission to enter a country. Those sit with the authority that issues them or with somebody regulated to advise, not with an agency that books rooms. Legal and medical questions go the same way: you will be told what an operator requires of you, and never what you ought to do about it.
How long before a person replies?
Whatever reaches the form is opened in the order it landed, and an answer goes back inside one working day. At every hour of every day the form will take a request, so a note typed at three in the morning is a perfectly ordinary way to reach here. Costing a specific date runs longer, two to four working days, because somebody has to ask the operator what is actually free on that departure rather than read a figure off a page.
Do you ring people, or send messages?
Never, unless a written request asks for a call and names an hour. Nobody here telephones a person who has not asked to be telephoned, and no text message is sent from this office at all. Write, and writing comes back. The number printed on these pages is a real line in a real room for anybody who would sooner talk, and it is nowhere described as answering at all hours, because it does not.
What does one traveller pay?
Every figure on the board is worked out per head with two people sharing a room, which is how the operating companies publish. Travelling alone attracts a supplement fixed by that company rather than by this office, running from a modest addition on a guesthouse departure to close to a second fare on a small vessel. You get the exact number before committing to anything, and on a few departures the operator will put two unaccompanied travellers together if that suits you better.
How does a date actually get held?
By the operating company, in writing, and never by this office. Sending the form is you asking. A written figure from here is the thing that can become a reservation. Until that company confirms and you have read what it requires of you, the date belongs to whoever asks for it next.
Will I be billed the figure on the board?
They are honest opening figures, printed as `from` an amount per head on two sharing, and they shift with the departure, with the exchange rate and with how early you commit. What binds is the number the operating company writes into your confirmation, and no confirmation goes out from here carrying a figure different from the one quoted without you being told first why it moved.
Why does this site print no opening times?
Because an opening time undertakes that somebody is sitting in a particular chair, and a one-room agency cannot keep that undertaking fifty-two weeks a year. Turnaround is what is undertaken instead: an answer inside one working day, and where more time is needed you are told so and told what is holding it up.
Does this office take any money from me at any point | It does not. Nothing is due when a request arrives, nothing when a date is reserved in your name, nothing afterward. The company running that departure invoices you on its own paperwork. Weeks later, once it has closed the departure out, it pays this counter a commission out of money you had already paid it. No page here carries a field that would take a card number. // Can you book a flight for me, or a cruise | No to both. What this counter places instead is the ground half of a departure: rooms, guide, vehicle, local transfers and any permit a route needs. Getting to the start and home again is your own arrangement, and no figure on the board contains air. Where a route crosses water, the company operating that departure carries you over it under its own licence and bills the crossing inside its ground price. // Do you sell insurance, or advise on visas and passports | No, no and no. Cover of any kind sits outside this counter: none sold, none arranged, none suggested. That belongs with a licensed insurance agent in Missouri. What a border asks for turns on your own passport and your own route, so entry documents go to the government of the country concerned and to an immigration attorney. Vaccination questions go to a physician. // Is this a publication of some kind | No. It is a booking counter with a board of dates and a telephone. Nothing here comes out on a schedule, and no page carries an opinion about a place, an operator or a room. A row on the board is a date, a duration, a figure and what the operator includes. Where a page says a route climbs hard for two days, somebody measured that. // What happens if a departure does not fill | The operating company sets a minimum party for each date and a cut-off for reaching it, usually six to eight weeks ahead. Short at that point, it stands the date down and tells this counter within hours. You hear it here the same day, in writing, with the other dates that company can offer and what it owes you back. // I am travelling alone. What does that add | Every figure on the board is per person with two people sharing, so a solo traveller carries whatever single supplement the operating company charges. Across the week-long walking departures that has run between $180 and $520. On the island routes, where one room is held for the whole stay, it can reach a third of the figure again. Four of the twenty-six add nothing at all. // How is a date actually held | By the operator, in the operator's own book, never by a note kept in this one. Once you say yes to a named date at a named figure, your name goes across that afternoon. Some companies hold a place for two to four days on a name alone. Others hold nothing until their own deposit reaches them, on their form. You are told which of the two before you decide anything. // What if I have to cancel | Put it in writing here and it reaches the operating company the same working day, or write to that company yourself, which works equally well, since the contract is between the two of you. Refunds, deadlines and any charge come out of that contract, sent to you whole before you agreed to anything. This counter makes the request, chases it and tells you the figure first. the note on changing a booking shows how those deadlines fall. // How quickly does somebody answer | Whatever reaches the form is opened in the order it landed, and an answer goes back inside one working day. A question with one fact inside it, whether a date is still open, generally comes back inside that same working day. Where a figure has to be worked against dates you name, allow two to four working days, since the operating company answers on its own clock and this counter waits with you. Where the operator has to answer first, the reply says so and names the day it is expected. // Will anybody here ring me or send me a text message | Never, on either count. This counter answers; it opens nothing. A telephone number on a request is used to reply to that request and nothing else, and text messages leave this office at no hour and for no reason. There is no list to join and so none to escape. A call about a departure you never wrote in about started somewhere else. // Why does one place sit on the board twice at two prices | Because those are two different weeks buying two different things. The dearer row may carry two more nights, a room at the front of the house, a guide across the whole route instead of half of it, and beds that cost the operator more in the month most people want. Each row keeps its own dates, its own figure and its own inclusions. the twelve months of the board sorts the pair into their months. // What if I miss a departure that runs on one date only | It waits for the same date next year, and this counter says that plainly rather than steering you into whatever else leaves that week. Five of the twenty-six run once and once only, because the thing each is built around, a migration, a light, a harvest, happens once. Six other rows stay open across most of the year. Send the weeks you can free up and the reply names which fit.
What makes a first message easy to answer
Two lines settle most of it. The first is the weeks you can genuinely get away, given as dates or as a month with however much slack sits either side of it, since half the answers above move with the week. The second is who is going: how many people, across how many rooms, and whether anyone has a limit the days should be planned around.
A trip name is optional. A month and a rough direction gets back the two or three rows that fit, with what each leaves for you to arrange. Your name reaches an operating company only once you have seen a figure against a date and said yes to that figure in writing. The order of events is at what happens between your note and a confirmed date, a request priced against your own dates begins at asking for a price against your own dates, and if the month is the fixed part of your year, the twelve months of the board is the faster way in.
Ask the office to hold a departure
Open 24/7, this form will take a booking request whenever you write it. Nowhere on it is a card number requested and nothing is charged, because no money is ever owed to this office. Whatever reaches the form is opened in the order it landed, and an answer goes back inside one working day.
Nowhere on this page is a card number requested, and none is kept by this office anywhere. Writing costs you nothing and ties you to nothing. Asking is not the same as holding: your date belongs to whoever asks next until the operating company has confirmed it on paper and you have read what it requires of you.