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digital green book
Hi, we're on the Dec 5 tour. I'm accustomed to getting the green book a month before the trip. Our TA says we should get a digital one 2 or 3 weeks before the trip. Do you think that's because of covid regs changing so often? How early did anyone get their electronic documents before their tour?
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The 2-3 week prior to the tour aligns with when we got our digital green book for our Iceland tour in July.
I think it’s to save Tauck money while they haven’t been able to do tours. Also, so many people are canceling last minute. Probably after they might have received their green book.
While I haven’t taken a tour since the start of Covid, so don’t know how the electronic one looks. If Tauck could send it so we could assemble it in book size form, I would prefer that to full size sheets of paper. I’d even go and get it spiral bound, it’s really cheap to get done at somewhere like Staples.
British, don't you know we have entered the digital / paperless age?
I do some of the same things. When we take a car trip my wife calls up Waze on her phone for navigation info- which I seldom follow for one truly valid reason or another. I usually print out and take Google maps and directions!
This reminds me of the recent Progressive Insurance commercials- "We can't prevent you from becoming your parents."
I think I'll print and bind too. I'm just anxious to look at it. That means we're really going somewhere.
We got the digital green books for both our trips in Sep. They came about 3-4 weeks prior to the start dates. The subject line was "Important Pre-Departure Tour Documents" followed by our last name and reservation number. It includes a link to download a PDF.
The only thing I bothered to print was the info on arrival, the phone numbers to call in case your flight gets delayed, tip amounts, etc. The rest was just the itinerary - which wasn't any different from the one available online months prior - and a repeat of Covid info that also was available on the website. My flight information was sent in separate emails or I already had access to using the airline apps. Some on our tour got their flight info in the green book.
I was anxious to get ours too but was fairly underwhelmed when it arrived. The concept needs some work.
I received mine 3 weeks before our trip. While much of it was duplicative, there was the information about gratuities, confirmation of my extra nights etc. and a two page summary of the hotels and dates that I could share with my family. I was pleased I received it.
I received my digital green book 4 weeks from departure. It prints beautifully on 8.5 x 11 paper. If you have a color printer, Tauck’s name is in green. I did bind mine and made an extra one for family. One nice thing about the size is it’s easier to write little notes in the margins. It’s always exciting to receive the green book no matter how it is delivered!
I guess I’m partly old fashioned and partly cautious about not having anything ‘concrete’ that doesn’t rely on batteries to prove who I am or what vacation, flights, tickets and so on that I have reserved or paid for.
This, I have to admit has been more negative than positive for us these past few weeks….
We had printed tickets for a recent flight. The airline attendant at the gate questioned my ticket, said it was my husband’s who had been in front. I look at her screen, see his name and then mine, I point it out to her….my husband’s first name is often thought of as a last name here in the US, is pronounced wrongly sometimes and is mistaken for a female name….in England it’s a perfectly common male name, never used for a female. Anyway, I think that’s why she was confused.
Once on the plane, a guy came up and said I was in his seat, we had the same seat, I had paper, he had phone. The flight attendant took my paper ticket off me and said she had to make a phone call. By the time she came back, my husband was looking at our tickets on his phone, mine had changed, my aisle ticket opposite his aisle seat had changed! I was the one who had to move to a middle seat next to my husband….and that’s how I ended up next to the person who wouldn’t wear his mask.
Just a few days later, we went to our first live stadium event since the Pandemic began. We had printed our tickets. When we presented them, the guy said they had been printed twice, they were not the originals ones. We know you can’t print tickets twice and we hadn’t. We were pulled out of line. They were checked at the ticket booth, deemed to be OK and new paper tickets were printed for us so we would not have more problems. But we did….our seats were 1 and 2. We get to our row….there was no number 2. Some of the numbers were changed with tape, it went 1, 3, 4, 4, and so on….yes no 3 and two 4”s. We go to the usher, he says just sit there, it’s fine. Yep, you guessed it, here come four people and I’m sitting in one of their seats. I point to the two number 4”s and I also said I had been told to sit where I was sitting. The show had started, they start to get angry. We say we are not moving…I’m nervous, two young women are angry, my husband says go see the usher. Two of them go, I continue to get abuse. They come back, say they are moving, we never see the usher or them again. I’m upset. Eventually I begin to enjoy the show. I’m almost done liking the paper ticket thing.
And then, I’m driving in the car and listening to the radio and who should come on, Peter Greenberg, the travel guy who proceeds to say he always prints everything, he’s been behind too many people with dead phone batteries or are looking through their phone pages to find their tickets and so have we, we were behind someone just last week who held up the line trying to locate his tickets on his phone, the security agent actually beckoned us forward while the guy tried to look for his ticket…. that’s why we like paper!
So really, this is all fifty fifty. I am also one of those peoples who doesn’t like reading books on a tablet, yes even me who likes to minimize packing, takes actual books on vacation….though on a Tauck tour, who has time to read them …unless you are stuck on a small ship cruise….but that’s another issue and opinion….
Meanwhile, I do hope that Tauck thinks about sending the electronic papers in booklet size and not the 81/2 x 11 size, The latter is how they used to send them in the mail in the green plastic folder, does anyone remember those? I also wouldn’t mind paying extra for an optional green book.
The pandemic has changed many things. Ponant and Tauck had issued some pretty nice key card holders that I would use as a wallet while traveling. On our recent Tauck/Ponant trip they were made of paper. I will bring a couple of our old ‘nice’ ones on our next trip. All the travel companies are going to be saving money wherever the can.
I'm with you, British, insofar as preferring the Green Books. And yes, I have quite a few of the green faux leather folders. They are great for organizing foreign currency, receipts and other odds and ends that one accumulates on trips. Just yesterday I used one to organize important paperwork for my friend who takes care of our little dog whenever we travel. It contains proof of his current immunizations (no CDC card..ha,ha), insurance information, and authorization for her to act as my agent should an emergency arise. I love those folders as much as the Green Books!
If you only have Adobe Reader or similar program not the advanced software where you can edit PDF docs, you can copy and paste sections of PDF docs into a Word doc.
For my Kenya and Tanzania trip, the TD had a booklet printed with not only an every day schedule but notes about the different places we visited but stories about the area. Later she told us that all 3 TD's for that tour had gotten together and payed for the booklet printing.