July 15th Start Date
The April 29th update is confusing for this start date. It says all Europe land tours are cancelled through July 15th but then says for all guests departing July 15th or later Tauck will advise you before the final payment date. Has anyone called Tauck on this to see if this trip is cancelled yet? Can Tauck respond to this as I'd rather not call and be put on hold for long periods. If this cancels I'd like to plan in advance to reschedule another trip. I've had 6 Tauck tours cancel in the last year. This could be 7 and the Portrait of India on September 29th is not looking good either!
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I’m in the same boat as you, waiting for a tour that begins a few days after July 15th I noticed a tour I’m interested in in July 2022 but don’t want to book it until this July tour is canceled, that is if I can persuade my husband that sub Saharan Africa will be open to tours in 2022 ( he’s not convinced it will be open even then) The tour is almost sold out already.
Tauck does not monitor this forum regularly as you probably know. We have been very good about not calling Tauck, but I’m sure people are calling them all the time, you might just want to call, put your phone on speaker and do other tasks while you are waiting for them to answer. They did announce they are employing more phone people commencing on May 7th. I’m concerned I might get an inexperienced person when I get called, which is why we have been confused this past year with different information from different agents.
I’m not sure you will get any more info. When our April tour was canceled, the agent was totally convinced our tour would be going in July even though we thought not, she obviously thought we were the nutty ones.
The agent may have been wrong about the July tour, but still correct about you being the nutty ones!
Smiling Sam, A swimsuit model might be offended by such a remark 😂☹️🤪
Just got the email stating this July 15th trip is officially cancelled.
An email wow, not a phone call. So that means you have to call and wait in line to make your decisions about what to do.
I make all of my Tauck reservations through my travel agent - she calls me when she hears the status of a trip, we discuss the options and then she calls Tauck to resolve the matter. In ten years of travel with Tauck I have never directly talked to anyone there as my agent takes care of all of that.
smarks50 - We do the same 100% of the time. Our TA is Tauck certified and it makes things so much easier especially during this pandemic and there is no direct cost to us. He gives us insight on all the future Tauck trips we are thinking about and arranges Tauck air. We have found the air to be very competitive for price and scheduling. We have had to cancel five trips that had scheduled air including seat assignments and it was simple to cancel it all especially since we had not paid for any air.
Do you travel to/from a major US hub? For people that travel from major hubs their comments all seemed to echo yours with respect to Tauck air prices. Whereas I've found that Tauck air doesn't seem to be competitive from a minor hub like Tucson from which we travel, compared to what I can find with a bit of effort and research.
Apart from the difficulty of getting money back on a canceled air, Tauck is sometimes cheaper sometimes not.
My confusion is....if a travel agent books air for you, and you go on the trip with Tauck and there is a problem with your flight, can Tauck sort it out for you in a remote place with dodgy internet or does your agent have to do it. I saw this happen when we were in Borneo, when the lockdown happened, those who had booked their own air could not be helped by the travel company who had booked our air for us. Eventually after many hours, they agreed to help those others get flights but not to sort out with the flights they already had.
I think it depends on the travel agent. I have a friend who is a travel agent, but she is a solo practitioner. I don't use her. I use Amex Platinum, because I know that anywhere I am in the world, at any time of day, I can pick up the phone and get someone to help me. It was a godsend when I was trying to get out of Jordan last March. And Tauck's Guest Protection Plan reimbursed me for the last-minute flight, even though I had not booked it with Tauck.
We use Amex platinum like MCD if we don’t get Tauck to book our flights. Would your agents be available 24/7 in an emergency? We once had to call Amex at 5 am, I can’t remembered why, but it was an emergency and they were there for us and rebooked a flight.
We haven’t used an agent since ‘package tours’ in England in our twenties. We put together our independent trips ourselves or with Amex for hotels and flights, lots and lots of points that way. Otherwise, we use Tauck
We have been very fortunate not having to reschedule flights while on a trip except for one time. If we had to again, having booked thru Tauck, the TD would probably help us out even though we used a TA unless we were in Borneo like British. Then we would probably have to work with the tribal chief!
The one time we had a flight issue was on our return from Sydney on our Spotlight on Australia tour. It turned out that Netanyahu stayed at our Sydney hotel when we did AND left Sydney airport near our scheduled departure. Of course they stopped all flights until his plane left. This delayed our departure by about 90 minutes causing us to miss our connecting flight in SF to DC. This was our first Tauck trip and we booked the flights on our own. It took us forever to get another flight and wound up getting the last 2 middle seats. It was terrible. I'm sure when in SF a call to a TA (if we had one) would have helped a lot.
Sam - We always fly out of Dulles. It is only 30 minutes from home. I'm sure we are able to get better Tauck international flights because of it.
For those of you who do not fly out of a major hub, it might be worthwhile to research flying in the opposite direction first in order to secure possible reduced rates to your ultimate destination. For example, if you live in Tucson, consider flying to LAX and then on to your final destination. There are many non-stop LAX flights to major European cities. This might sound counterintuitive, but it is worth checking into. When I lived in New Mexico, I would fly to LAX and then non-stop to JFK, my final destination, enabling me to avoid changing planes in Chicago. I did the same when my final destination was Kobenhavn (Copenhagen). I would fly from Albuquerque to LAX then non-stop to Kobenhavn. Tauck will be more than happy to assist you if you do not wish to do the research on your own. This is just a suggestion. Good luck.
It's also worth checking out Air Canada flights. There are many flights from Toronto and Vancouver to our intended destinations. On the plus side for those hubs is you don't go "out of the way." As I'm sure Sealord can explain in more detail, planes fly the great circle path, not Mercator projection headings. For example, to fly to Europe from the northeast US or Canada, the heading is about 45 degrees, not 90. A 90 degree heading would put you in central Africa.
I've done what you suggest for several of our tours. I find a departure city somewhere in North America that has the best business class ticket bargain that works for the tour. Once that is found then I figure out how I can get to/from that city on another reservation, usually using miles. It is much easier to use miles within North America. I've done this for the Israel/Jordan tour and the Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand tour. For the Israel/Jordan tour Turkish Airlines had a spectacular deal for business class Toronto-Istanbul-Tel Aviv, returning Amman-Istanbul-Toronto. About $1000/person cheaper than any other business class ticket from a North American city. I used American miles to get to/from Toronto. For the V,C,T tour JAL had a super bargain to/from Vancouver. This time I used Delta to get to/from Vancouver. Again the total airfare was several hundred dollars less per person doing this.
The two reservation method isn't without risk and takes some research and effort to put it together (Ask AlanS about his efforts in securing airfare for his Jordan/Egypt tour next year). For us minor hub people the money you save begins to pay for another tour before you know it.
As BKMD said above, we try to fly great circle routes. We use charts that are Lambert Conformal Projections where a straight line on the chart appoximates a great circle route. The compass headings change throughout the flight. The transatlantic route structure changes every day with the planners finding the minimum time track, and building the route structure around that. Wind plays a significant part, and there are many tracks, so everyone does not get the best track, nor the perfect altitude.
🤪 Got that right! I make it hard on myself by having a bunch of “gotta haves” but it pays off in the end. I don’t need to use credits for our J&E flights so we are going with Turkish with Delta connections in the US. We ended up with better flights- shorter, no stops in CDG, AMS, FRA, etc., no Euro business seats, new A350 and 787 acft w/1-2-1 lay-flat seating, etc., and all for about $1500 p/p less than Delta (Delta still can’t even get us to Amman!) Now all I need is for Turkish to correct the seating diagram for one segment 😳
Be careful about anything utilizing Canada at this point. We spoke with family in Ottawa this week. They are on a lockdown again with going out restricted to essentials such as food shopping and visits to drug stores.
We also learned that the Canadian government decided to follow the path of getting more people partially vaccinated rather than fewer 100% vaccinated. Our relatives are over 70 and received their first Moderna shot in April. However, they cannot get the second shot until July. Right now they are vaccinating down to age 40 for their first shots. Hospitals in Toronto are overwhelmed and are transferring patients to Ottawa which currently has some open beds!
They don't know when Canada will open their borders to Americans. We kidded about late summer but you never know.
Our brother-in-law's mother lives in Florida and was hospitalized in April. If he had needed to go to Florida, return to Canada would have been quite cumbersome. Even with a negative covid test he would have needed to isolate in a government designated hotel at his expense for three days with a new covid test after returning. If everything was OK, after the three days he would be expected to quarantine at home for the remainder of the 14 days.