Travel Forum Awareness
Tauck needs to do a better job making its travelers aware of the Travel Forum. I have put posts on the Forum for just about every one of our trips and only had moderate response for one trip. It was wonderful getting to know people before hand and I think it enhanced the travel experience. I don't think people, especially first time Tauck travelers, know about the Travel Forum. It's a great way to meet fellow travelers so we don't end up as complete strangers when we arrive on the first day of our journey. Please make a greater effort on getting the word out on your Travel Forum. Thank you.
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The corollary to this is that even those who know about the forum don't first read the "Before You Go" and "Packing Tips" on the website for their particular trip, read through past posts or use the search function to see if their question has already be asked/answered. Lots of valuable information here.
Some folks are just shy and would rather "meet" their fellow travelers on their own terms on the trip.
I am wondering how it works when customers book with a Travel agent, do they even use the website?
Joe and Joyce Bono
Maybe what would help, would be an automated email from the Tauck website sent to you once you register. It could welcome new comers to the site, provide information on where to find useful information like the "Before You Go" and "Packing Tips" tabs, how to search the forum for information, etc.
It could also warn all those scammers and other nuisance posters that they aren't welcome and will be deleted/blocked.
Yup! There was a thread last year with many similar suggestions when Tauck Tim mentioned they were reworking the website. The current version of the "Summary of Purchase" attached to the "Thank You for Your Reservation" welcome email, states:
"PREPARING TO GO: We encourage you to visit our website at "www.tauck.com" to learn more about destination information such as packing, weather and reading suggestions specific to your journey. Select your tour, then click on a topic under 'Before You Go' to find helpful travel information. Additionally, we have partnered with Longitude, a travel book company, and prepared lists of recommended reading material appropriate to your destination. To view or order these selections, click on 'More Details About This Offer' under "Suggested Reading" within your tour itinerary."
Adding a few words about and link(s) to the general and trip-specific Tauck forums is an excellent idea and would be so easy to do. Maybe Tauck Tim could pass this along to management.
The feature I would like to see activated (it appears the website software was already set up to work that way) is for the forum software to automatically generate an alert via email, text, or both (you designate and can opt-in or out at any time) to inform you anytime something new is posted to a thread you are following.
May I give you a few tips from an old researcher? One who never stops looking for answers ...
Read through the Forum headings and sub headings very carefully and take great care where you choose to post. Find a heading that matches your interest, or make a new sub-heading under the most appropriate heading. I know this sounds really puerile, but not everyone intuitively knows how to search for information ... and to ask the right questions to get the most appropriate (or logical) answer. If you question is similar to an existing thread, add your question there .... but only if that thread is fairly current.
If you are posting something like ...."My family and I are going to Tipperary, the long way, on the 14th of June. Are you going, too?" ... you may or may not get any hits. Particularly if you posted your question in the South American Forum. Because of the difficulties in searching the forums, chances are you will never find your post again, let alone anyone else who is planning to go to Ireland.
Try to head you posts very succinctly.
If you are trying to find a particular post, (your own!) try searching for a particular word or phrase (you) used in that post. This can work very well in finding a cache of possible hits.
Read through as many existing posts as you can before you post your question. Chances are very good someone has already answered your question or one very similar to it.
Some replies with be more useful than others. Some people have never travelled before. Anywhere. Not even out of their home town. Their first questions here might be very simple. Hopefully, over time and future travelling education, their questions will be less simple and their answers more helpful to others using this community.
People from all over the world read and use this forum. Not everyone else in the world knows (or cares) about your pet interests. Nor, indeed, do they understand what you are trying to say! Their knowledge of the English language might be quite different to yours and might have no knowledge at all of your language's idioms. (Which can be a very good thing and a useful tool in itself!) There are many people who are not familiar with American English, or cell phone speak.
If you are looking for general cruising information, or cruising scalps, this is probably not the forum for you. There are cruising forums that will work better for you than this one. This forums concentrates more on the journey and the destination than the departure tally.
And when the Forums are revamped, all this will be useless, because the body of knowledge represented here will likely be lost.
Cheers,
Jan
You can do a search on the term "British" in any or "All Forums". A search of "All Forums" returns 20 pages while a search of "General Discussion" returns 4 pages of posts quoting "British," or where "British" has been used in the title or text. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, you can't search only for posts originated by "British."
Searching on multiple or strings of terms can be very slow and sometimes the search crashes. It appears you can use a comma or semicolon to separate multiple search terms and that quotation marks can be used, but are not necessary. It would be nice to have a search function guide.
I guess, as Jan said, the lesson here is to use a specific, logical, search term(s) if you want to find a post on an active forum that is older than a few weeks .