The Travel Group

Future of Travel Series - Airports

You might think that the logical place to start this series of articles about travel in the future would be airlines.  After all, you won’t be taking that cruise, staying at a resort, or doing a business meeting in a far-away city without the airline.   And a lot of media attention has already been on the steps airlines are taking to reassure...

Because our clients don't stop needing us during an emergency like this, we are maintaining our regular office hours, Mon. to Fri., 8:00am to 5:00pm.   While our consultants will be working more limited hours you should be able to connect with one of our travel professional even if your regular agent is unavailable.  And, of course, we are regularly checking email.

We know that your friends may be in trouble somewhere and didn't have the benefit of a travel agent to help them.  Airlines and tour companies are practically impossible to reach right now because of...

"Unprecedented" is one of those words we are all sick of hearing; but that pretty well sums up this worldwide crisis.

As of Sat., Mar. 21, we have successfully repatriated all clients who responded to our early warning to get home.  And with only one exception we successfully got the folks home who had resisted the early warnings from the Prime Minister (and us).  For the past few...

Everyone "knows" you can't really get a business class ticket on airline points, right?

Wrong.  Clients of The Travel Group can, and do.  Here's how.

First of all, here's the back story.  Although credit card rewards programs make a convincing pitch - fly any airline, any time, anywhere - there is one important caveat.  Credit card rewards programs are based on a 1 to 2 cent per mile formula.  That's fine for economy class travel, but be prepared to dish out a million points for an international business class ticket.  That's the number...

The latest hotel trend is not a good one.  Major chains such as Marriott (who now own Starwood) and Hilton are imposing 48-hour cancellation policies on customers.

It wasn't that long ago that 6pm day of arrival cancellation policies were the norm.  Then, about 3 or 4 years ago, all the major hotel chains started imposing 24-hour cancel policies. Travellers accepted that change in stride, as it didn't seem too unreasonable.  Roughly the same time, hotels also started putting similar restrictions on cancelling nights during your stay: eg. insisting you must give them 1...