Category Archives: Travel Tips

Air Canada Carry-on Baggage Enforcement: Great But Not 100% Effective

In late May of this year, Air Canada announced that they will begin to enforce the carry-on baggage allowance at major airports across Canada. Last week, I travelled on Air Canada and experienced this process first hand. I must say, I was quite impressed.

At check-in, Air Canada had several staff members approaching everyone at check-in to assess their carry-on baggage, measuring it if required and then affixing a “Carry-On Approved” sticker as shown.

Upon my arrival at the gate, I was pleasantly surprised to see how the majority of travellers had appropriately sized carry-on luggage.

This was a dramatic improvement over all of my previous flying experiences, especially after Air Canada introduced their policy to charge a $25 fee for the first checked bag. When they implemented that policy, almost everyone had 3 bags and usually one of them was oversized. This is extremely aggravating for us business travelers who generally speaking have appropriately sized carry-on that cannot be checked. I used to dread the boarding process, looking at all of the other travelers with all of their huge bags and stressing out over if I will have room for mine. To get around this, I would always book a seat near the rear of the aircraft so that I would board first and if the overhead bins above my seat were already full, I could stow my briefcase in any bin in front of my seat.

In spite of Air Canada’s efforts to enforce their carry-on policy, there were a handful of passengers who slipped through the cracks like this lady in the photo below.

From her bag tags, I could see she was a frequent traveler so there is no excuse. While boarding the aircraft in single file, she even had the nerve to push me aside and bud in front of me! Now that most certainly isn’t frequent flyer etiquette!

After boarding was complete, the flight attendants announced that the overhead bins were full and asked some passengers to volunteer checking their bags. I’m still not sure exactly how this happened since >90% of the passengers had appropriate carry-on. However, I suppose all it takes are a few Carry-on Cows like that woman to slip through the cracks and disrupt the system. In the end our flight was delayed approximately 20 minutes as the flight attendants tried to find passengers who were willing to check their bags.

So overall, the enforcement process was great not but entirely effective. In my opinion, I think that it would be much more effective if at the security checkpoint, all carry-on bags should be double-checked to make sure that they have the “Carry-On Approved” tag and passengers who have more than 2 bags, should not be permitted to go through security.

Safe travels my friends and don’t be shy to speak-up to those Carry-on Cows!

TSW

Vacation? How to Really Unplug From Work and Check Into Vacation Mode

In theory this sounds easy to do, but if you’re in sales or own your own business it can be almost impossible. If you’re like me, you worry that if you check-out from work that nobody else in your company will be able to handle your clients with the same quality of care that you do.

This is especially so because I’m guilty of checking my work emails and messages from the moment I wake up at 5:30am until just before I go to sleep at 10pm. Whether it’s the evening, the weekend or I’m off stick, I can’t help but attend to all my work-related calls, emails and text messages. By doing this, my clients have an expectation that I am available at all times.

The primary reason I opted to make myself so available is because I manage clients across Canada. I am based out of the east coast and almost half of my clients are on the west coast. This means that when my head office is closed at 4pm, it is still 1pm, the middle of the work day, for a substantial portion of my clients. Needless to say, I made myself available to them to secure the business and it was an excellent move.

This is all great until I need to take a break and go on vacation. How does one take time off when work is constantly beckoning you at your side?

Similar to the electronic devices we use on a daily basis, we too need to rest and recharge. It is essential to our mental and physical health. Taking a well-deserved break will enable you to come back to work refreshed and better able to tackle all of the challenges in front of you.

How can you “separate” yourself from work and not feel guilty?

Keep in mind that everyone (your clients included) can understand the need to take a break. As long as you can get away without their service being completely interrupted in your absence, go for it! We are all deserve some sort of vacation, so don’t cheat yourself of that.

Follow the following steps:

Make a Contact List for Your Clients to Contact in Your Absence

Compile a list of the basic elements of your job and assign a person in your company to handle those tasks in your absence. Make sure to get their permission and your supervisor’s permission to delegate your tasks before you leave, otherwise you might land in some hot water with your co-workers.

Set an Out-of-Office Email Reply

This is quite standard practice. Be sure to include the exact dates that you will be unavailable and all of the contact information of your colleagues who will be able to assist your customers in your absence. Upon my return to the office, I will send an email to all of my clients who emailed me while I was away in order to assure that their inquiries were taken care of. This is important because I have noticed that almost 50% of my clients will wait for me to come back because they prefer to deal with me directly.

Change Your Voicemail

Compile a temporary voicemail message which will relay the same details as your out-of-office reply.

Give Your Clients a Head’s Up

Email: This is very important if you have clients that have grown accustomed to emailing you and assuming you have everything taken care of and don’t check their inbox for a reply. If a client places an order in the morning and doesn’t see your out-of-office reply until later that day or the next day, their order may be substantially delayed and they will not likely be very happy. Send them a quick email before you leave stating exactly when and how long you will be away and who they are to contact in your absence. Your clients will really appreciate this.

Text: Since there is no automatic out-of-office text message reply, be sure to text your clients who regularly text you before you leave to let them know you will not be receiving your messages. I have no idea why there isn’t an app for this in this day in age. Whoever invents this will be a millionaire!

Turn Off Your Phone and Get Off the Internet!

Yes, that’s right! Disconnect!

Enjoy Your Vacation!

Today I’m heading off on vacation for one week. I’ve finished scrambling to get everything done before I leave, which often is more stressful than the average work week and I’ve completed all of the steps above and plan to enjoy my time off guilt-free. I hope you do the same.

Safe travels my friends and don’t forget to charge your batteries every once in a while too.

TSW

How to Keep Fit While on the Road

Are you a road warrior and struggle to keep up your fitness routine while en route? Do you tell yourself “I just don’t have the time.”? Or “My hotel doesn’t have a gym so I can’t work out.”?

Well, it’s time you stop lying and making excuses to yourself. The truth is you CAN make time for exercise and you CAN do a full workout without access to a gym. The same goes for eating healthy on the road, as some of you might recall from my previous article on “How to Eat Healthy on the Road”. It’s all possible. You just have commit to it. In this post, I will provide some helpful hints on how you can make time to keep fit and work out even if you do not have access to traditional exercise equipment.

HOW TO MAKE TIME TO EXERCISE:

Wake Up Earlier in the Morning

Assuming you don’t have to hit the road really early (and by really early, I mean before 6am), in my opinion, this is the best time to work out. Working out in the morning has several benefits including but not limited to:

Waking you up!
Increasing your energy level and metabolism throughout the day.
Give you a great excuse to have a full, healthy breakfast before you hit the road. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Don’t skimp!
Forcing you to go to bed earlier which will reduce the amount of snacking and alcohol consumption you may otherwise do in the evenings.

Fit in Workouts in Between Meetings

When you’re in and out of sales calls all day long, you spend the majority of your day sitting, be it in the car or a client’s office. If you have the time in between meetings, the best thing you can do is go for a walk! I say walk, not jog because you’ll be dressed in business attire and won’t want to break a sweat before that next meeting.

WHERE can you walk?

If it is nice outside, take a stroll in a park, side street or sidewalk in town.

If the weather is poor or too cold, find a shopping mall and take a long brisk walk (without stopping to shop of course!).

If you have more time (>1h), try to squeeze in one of my “Car Workouts” in this article.

After Work: Skip the Snack and Workout Instead

This is another great option which you can do as soon as you get settled into your hotel and before you eat dinner. Some benefits include:

Relieving stress from a hard day on the road
Curbing your appetite. Skip that sugary snack or drink upon your arrival to your hotel room, work out instead. Then afterwards so you can load up on a healthy, high protein dinner with lots of veggies. This may also curb your temptation to snack late at night.
Providing that last burst of energy to get you through those daily reports and emails after dinner.
Improved sleep (as long as you exercise at least 3 hours before going to bed).

So now that you’ve figured out WHEN you can exercise, WHAT are you going to do for exercise and HOW?

HOW TO PLAN A WORKOUT IN ANY ENVIRONMENT

When you arrive at your hotel, take a few minutes to check out what facilities are available to you. Typically you will either have access to a

Full gym, equipped with cardio machines and weights
Partial gym, equipped with cardio equipment only OR
No gym

If you’re lucky, you will have access to a fully equipped gym and will be able to do your usual or scheduled workout routine. Unfortunately, most hotels do not offer this, so you will likely have to do a bit of work to plan your workout.

When you visit the fitness facility in your hotel, bring a small piece of paper and a pen with you (or the notepad in your phone) and make an inventory of the equipment. Next to each piece of equipment make note of the different exercises that you can do. If you have been working out regularly in the days prior, simply continue with your regular scheduled exercise regimen. On the other hand, if you have been off for a few days, try to do a full body workout and/or work out as many muscle groups as possible. When you’re ready to do your workout, take your note with you to the gym to keep you on track.

In the event that you don’t have access to any weights or exercise equipment, I would recommend trying one of the following workouts I’ve developed with the assistance of my personal trainer.

Tip: If you have access to a treadmill, try to squeeze in some cardio after your workout as this will reduce the amount of lactic acid (a compound that causes muscle cramping) in your bloodstream.

No treadmill? No problem! If you can get outside to walk or jog, great! If not, most hotels have stairs so try going up and down a few flights to get your cardio in!

The Hotel Room Workout:

Below is a list of suggestions for various exercises that you can do to target certain muscle groups. All of these exercises can be done in a basic hotel room with no equipment:

Legs: Squats, Lunges, Step-ups (using a table or chair in your room)

Abs: Put a sheet or towel on the floor. Use the base of the bed frame or air conditioner to position your feet under to keep stable and crunch, crunch, crunch away! There are so many ab exercises you can do. Try a plank position as well.

Chest: Push-ups (on the floor or against a desk, table or bed)

Triceps: Triceps dips on any window ledge, counter or solid surface.

The Car Workout:

I will forewarn you that you must not be too shy or embarrass easily to do this one. This workout is great if you have time between appointments and/or you find yourself “homeless” at some point in your travels. By “homeless” I’m referring to the time in between when you have to check out of a hotel and can check into your next hotel. I have categorized each exercise by target muscle groups.

What you will need:

Weights (optional): If you’re travelling in your own car, take them from home. If you’re away from home and have a rental, try buying some containers of cat litter that have a handle. They are heavy, cheap and could be used to assist you with traction in the event your vehicle gets stuck in snow, ice or mud. If you don’t have those, try the move in the image above (pull-ups using the coat hanger handles in the back seat of your car)
Running Shoes
Water

Warm-up: Try a 5 minute walk, jog (on the spot, around the car) or jumping jacks

Triceps: Open your trunk and face away from the car. Do triceps dips on the lip of the trunk (making sure to keep the palms of your hands placed firmly on the lip of the trunk and fingers facing forward).

Chest: Push-ups either against the open car trunk lip or on the ground

Legs: Squats, Lunges (stationary or walking lunges around the vehicle), Step-ups onto the open trunk lip (only if you have good balance!)

Abs: Sitting on the open lip of the trunk and your hands placed firmly on both sides, fully extend your legs, hold them in place for as long as you can, then contract your legs and repeat.

Biceps: Bicep curls using the containers of cat litter OR if you’re really ambitious, inside your car position yourself in the middle of your car and do pull-ups using the coat hangers in your rear seats like in the above image which will work your chest as well.

Think you’re going to look ridiculous doing those things? All I’m going to say is “Suck it Up Princess! And Just Do it!”

People do Tai Chi in the park all the time. Do they look stupid?..

Ahem…no comment

I digress.

If you find yourself struggling with devising an exercise routine or keeping motivated while you’re on the road, and don’t have a personal trainer to assist you, you should look into companies such as Business Travel Life, which is founded by fitness enthusiast, consultant and former road warrior Kristina Portillo. Business Travel Life can provide you with workouts customized to meet your unique fitness goals while accommodating your travel schedule. They will even provide personal training via video conferencing which you can do from the comfort of your hotel room. It is an excellent service that I would highly recommend if you are the type of person that needs that extra “push” to stick to your fitness goals.

If you enjoyed these tips, you may aIso be interested in a guidebook I am currently working on, “A Road Warriors Guide to Eating Healthy and Keeping Fit on the Road” which I hope to have available in print within the next year. Be sure to subscribe to my blog be notified when it becomes available, as well as for new travel and sales tips which are posted every Thursday.

In the meantime my fellow road warriors, “Keep fit and have fun!”.

TSW

p.s. I hope at least one person got that reference!

Pack Your Carry-on Luggage Appropriately or Risk Not Flying at All

If you’re travelling for business and your briefcase containing all of your portable electronic devices doesn’t conform to your airline’s carry-on standards, you can forget that business trip!

In this post I will provide some general airline travel tips and provide suggestions on what types of baggage you should travel with and the contents each baggage type should contain.

How many times have you packed for a trip only to end up using half if not less of what you packed? We have all done it at some point. As we become more seasoned travellers, we learn how to pack more wisely. In the US, more and more people are travelling (see infographic from Hudson News below), and most of whom (I say from experience), do not know how to pack appropriately. Now, airlines are beginning to crack down on these passengers and you need to be prepared for it the next time you fly.

Last week Air Canada announced that they will begin strictly enforcing their carry-on allowance at Pearson International Airport (YYZ) in Toronto effective this past Monday and they will begin doing so in other international airports across the country over the coming months. This means that at all check-in and security check points, Air Canada will be checking passengers’ carry-on baggage to ensure that it meets their specifications. If it does, each bag will be tagged with a “Carry-on Approved” tag. If the bag does not meet the airline’s specifications, passengers will be required to check their bags before proceeding through security.

When I heard this news, I thought “This is great news! It’s about friggin’ time!!!”. For those of you who read my article “The Top 10 Worst Airline Passengers I’ve Encountered”, you will recall me mentioning my frustration with the “Carry-on Cow”. You know, those passengers that have multiple and/or oversized bags and who naturally board the aircraft before you and then there is no room for your appropriately sized carry-on. Or those who deliberately try to sneak on baggage that they know is oversized so that they can avoid the baggage check fees. When this happens, the flight attendants then have to make arrangements to check their baggage and do that at no additional fee. My neighbor who is a baggage handler for Air Canada informed me that this is the reason for 95% of flight delays. That’s insane!!! So I’m extremely relieved that Air Canada is taking the lead in doing this, especially because that is the airline I most frequently fly on. I presume other airlines will follow suit shortly.

If you’re guilty of being one of those Carry-On Cows or just uncertain about the size of your carry-on bag, here are some helpful hints:

1. Research your airline’s baggage allowance policy BEFORE you PACK and plan what you will bring accordingly. You may have to buy new luggage.

TIP: Many companies sell bags with labels describing the bag as “carry-on size” when that is not the case at all. Bring a measuring tape with you and measure the luggage dimensions before you buy!

2. Wear you bulkiest items (largest shoes/boots, coats etc) on the plane.

3. Leisure Travellers: As long as you have your PHOTO ID and CREDIT CARD EVERYTHING ELSE CAN BE REPLACED. If you try to pack everything as carry-on because you are afraid of the airline losing your luggage, you won’t be able to get away with this anymore. Either pack less or just commit to packing a checked bag and don’t put any real unreplaceable items in it.

4. Portable Electronic Devices Can NOT be CHECKED. This is because most of these devices (laptop, chargers, batteries, GPS, mobile power inverter, etc) contain lithium ion batteries which are classified as dangerous goods. Their improper storage on an aircraft may result in an explosion, fire or short circuit, all of which will not only destroy the device but may pose a flight hazard.

This can pose a dilemma for business travelers who usually must carry several if not all of these devices. They take up half of my briefcase and they are items I cannot do my business trip without. So if you don’t pack them appropriately in your carry-on, you won’t be able to check them and therefore won’t be able to board the aircraft for that important business trip. Try explaining that to your boss!

To help you decide how to pack appropriately for your next trip, I have laid out my packing suggestions in the table below:

What’s in my baggage?

Small Purse:

Photo ID/Passport (You can’t board without it!)
Wallet (Relax– you can always buy whatever you forgot!)
Pens (Yes pens –If you are travelling internationally you will have to fill out customs immigration forms)
Cell Phone and charger
Travel documents (Yes I still keep paper copies of everything. After all you never know when your phone or tablet will die
iPad and charger
Personal articles such as liquids and gels (-moisturizer, hand sanitizer, lipstick, lighter), hair brush, gum, kleenex.

TIP: The best way to relieve pressure in your ears due to altitude changes is to blow your nose

Large Purse or Laptop Case (same dimensions):

Same as above except my laptop instead of iPAD (that’s just a toy!)
Small detail binder including literature

Small Carry-on:

Chargers, adaptors
Camera
Clothes – only enough for my trip. It is OK to wear something more than once!
Toiletries (that are less than 100mL each and total no more than 1L) in a TSA-approved bag

Briefcase:

TIP: Be sure to use a hardside briefcase to prevent yourself from over-stuffing it and making it oversized!

Laptop and charger
GPS, cable and mount
Phone charger (for wall and car)
iPod and aux cable
Power cord (most hotel rooms NEVER have enough outlets!)
Detail Binder
Literature (sell sheets)
Schedule/ Calendar for all of my appointments – Yes I’m old school! I prefer a paper back-up
Sales Reports (paper copies for handy reference)

Yes, believe it or not I squeeze all of this into my little briefcase!

TIP: If it gets full, I either put some literature in my checked baggage or arrange to have it shipped to me at my destination.

Checked Baggage:

You can put anything in here, except something that you cannot replace (i.e. family heirloom etc) or that is very heavy as most airlines will charge you an additional $100 or more if your back is over 50lbs.

I hope you find some of these tips helpful for when you are preparing for your next trip be it for business or pleasure. If you would like any more specific advice, please feel free to contact me at thetravellingsaleswoman@gmail.com or provide your questions in the comment field below.

Safe travels my friends, and just as a reminder, don’t be that Cary-on Cow. You won’t get away with it for much longer and certainly not if you fly with Air Canada.

Cheers,

TSW

Why You Shouldn’t Always Trust Hotel Websites

Have you ever booked a hotel online which you thought looked great on the hotel website only to discover that it more closely resembles The Bates Motel upon your arrival? And found yourself wondering, “What the heck am I doing here? Why on earth did I book this wretched place?” You are not alone!

Quite often hotel websites can be very misleading. They contain photos of hotel rooms and facilities that may have been taken 10-20 years ago, or the last time the hotel was renovated. Another scam is that some hotel chains may have standard photographs of hotel rooms that they use to represent all hotels in that particular chain even though in reality, some of their hotels are high end and others more closely resemble 1 star motels. How are you to know the difference?

Another kicker is that usually by the time you arrive at the hotel (or motel), you won’t be allowed to cancel without any penalty. Most hotels have very strict cancellation policies which usually require that you provide 24-48 hours notice or more to cancel your reservation.

Websites like TripAdvisor can be immensely helpful when selecting a hotel because for the most part, the reviews are legitimate. Occasionally however, especially if the town you plan to stay in is quite small, even the top rated hotel might not just be up to your usual standards. Sometimes even the top rated hotel can be well, much, much worse than you had ever imagined. Below are some of my hotel booking horror stories:

Oriental Working Girl Oasis

I needed to stay at a hotel that was relatively close to my first appointment that I had scheduled for early the following morning. After reviewing all of the hotels on TripAdvisor (but without reading the reviews I must add!), I booked myself into a hotel that was rated 4/5 stars, was very highly rated in the provincial hotel rating system and wasn’t cheap. At $175 per night, how bad could it be?

Upon my arrival at this “hotel”, I quickly realized that it was more of a motel and located within walking distance from a strip club. In the hotel lobby, I noticed that the high ranking they received from the provincial hotel rating system was well out of date. They put me in a room that I can only describe as an ‘Oriental Working Girl Oasis’, to put it nicely. The picture of this Oriental themed room is from the hotels website and was clearly taken before it was ever used. What you can’t see in this picture is that the room:

had mirrors all around the bed and on the ceiling
stunk like cigars and perfume
had no windows, just a sliding door to the street
and everything was covered in dust (clearly nobody was using the desk!)

I didn’t want to touch or use anything in that room.

So what did I do?

I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I kept all of my clothes on including my boots and a hat, drank a bottle of wine, passed out on the bed (on top of the covers on my jacket) and just got up and left immediately for my meeting the next morning. I didn’t even open my suitcase. I left it in the car because I was sure that some sort of vermin or insects would get into it. I know this doesn’t sound very classy, but in speaking with other sales representatives, I’m certain that I’m not the only one who has experienced this!

In doing some research, I discovered that this small town with a population of just over 50,000 people has 4 strip clubs. That’s 1 strip club per 12,500 people! In Canada, Windsor and Montreal both claim to have the highest number of strip clubs in Canada. Windsor has 10 strip clubs to service a population of 217,000 (ratio of 1:21,700) and Montreal has 75 strip clubs to service a population of 1.62 Million people (ratio of 1: 21,600). Based on this basic internet research I’ve done, I’m pretty sure I was staying in the Strip Club Capital of Canada! Next time around, I stayed at a very nice place that was over an hour from my first meeting.

Escort Escapade Hotel: The 5 Star Experience

This hotel I found online and not on a trusted traveler site. I was looking for a nice hotel in this particular city where I had an early meeting the next morning. In an internet search, this 5 star hotel came up. The website looked nice and the pictures of the room looked fabulous. The price was decent as well. I must add that this hotel website was in both English and French and the English side didn’t seem to make too much sense to me. The gist was that it was ideal for all business travelers and it had photos of what appeared to be business or high class couples enjoying champagne in the hotel room. When I went to make the reservation, I noticed that you could only do so if you paid in full with PayPal in advance. I called the hotel and they informed me that they do not accept credit cards but will accept cash or PayPal. This was a HUGE red flag! I asked my coworker to read the French side of the webpage, and well, let’s just say that there was a lot of information about this place that was either not correctly translated into English or not translated period! In particular, this “hotel” offered packages for business travelers where the hotel room was accompanied by an escort! I was sure glad to find this out BEFORE I decided to book this hotel and show up. Needless to say, I found alternative accommodations that did not come with an escort!

Hotel Hell

I discovered this gem which I call “Hotel Hell” when I first started out in sales. One of my superiors recommended to me that when I am researching hotels, that I should book those that were either in close proximity a major highway or the airport, depending on my schedule, so that is precisely what I did. However, having just researched location and price, I did not spend much time researching the quality of these hotels and now I am much the wiser!

This hotel was supposedly close to the airport and very reasonably priced. I had a very early flight the next morning, so I figured it would be fine to just spend the night. As I pulled up to the hotel, I quickly realized that it was in much poorer shape than the photos on the website had indicated. I noticed a bar/club/bowling alley on the main floor of this “hotel” and as I was pulling into the driveway, I witnessed a drug deal clearly taking place in front of the hotel in broad daylight. I immediately thought I would be a target of some sort of crime since I was driving an Audi A4, which was a complimentary upgrade from the rental car company. So much for that being a blessing! I hesitated going into the hotel, but I didn’t know where else to go since there were no other hotels in sight, because it was NOWHERE NEAR THE AIRPORT and I also didn’t want to just leave my belongings in car since I was sure it would be broken into.

At the front desk, I was informed that I had to pay in full for the room in advance and they asked me if I needed the room for the night or just a few hours??? Yikes!! Now if that wasn’t a bad sign, I don’t know what is!

I proceeded to the room and well, I couldn’t believe my eyes! These are some highlights:

The huge old school 27″ TV had a large sign on it saying “Please Do Not Remove From Room”
The bed sheets were filthy, torn and had clear hand prints on them
The window opened to the roof outside and had no locking mechanism
There was no phone in the room
Mouse or maybe rat excrement in the room corners

So what did I do?

I didn’t even want to sit on the bed it was so horrifically disgusting. I needed to find another hotel room ASAP. There was just NO way I was staying here. The problem was, I was in an unfamiliar city, there was no phone book in the room and my computer was dead (but I’m sure there was no internet access anyways!) so I had no way of figuring out another place to go. I had misplaced my city map and I felt lost.

So what did I do? I called my ex-boyfriend, whom I hadn’t spoken with in at least 5 years, hoping that he still lived in this city which is where he had moved here after our break-up. Luckily, he answered the phone and bailed me out. He escorted me out of the hotel (no pun intended) which made me feel safer since he was a big guy and he drove with me to a much nicer hotel that actually was close to the airport. I’ll never forget when he arrived at my hotel room, he said to me, “What are you doing here? I wouldn’t even &*%$ prostitutes in this hotel!” That was reassuring!

Needless to say, I’ve never stayed at discount hotels since, even if they are part of a major chain!

I also make sure to thoroughly research the reviews on sites like TripAdvisor and read them in great detail. When booking hotels now, my preferences are in the following order:

Hotel amenities
Positive Reviews*** MAKE SURE YOU READ THE REVIEWS FOR DETAILS! I CAN’T EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH!
Price
Location

So the next time you’re booking a hotel, make sure you do your research and not just blindly trust the hotel website because otherwise, you might just be in for a horrific surprise.

Bates Hotel anyone? Count me out!

If you have the time, take 5 minutes to write a review of the hotels you stay at regardless of whether or not your review is good or bad. All of us depend on those honest reviews.

Safe travels my friends.

Cheers,

TSW

Travelling? Leaving Your Home Unattended Could Cost You

Whether you live alone or with your family, you should never leave your home unattended for extended periods of time, and not for the reasons you are probably thinking of.

A couple of years ago, 2 days into my vacation in Grenada, I received a panicked phone call from my father who was checking in on my cats while I was away.

It sounded as though he was in the shower and I could barely make out what he was saying.

I jokingly asked him if he was calling me from the shower and the words he spoke just made my stomach sink, “No I’m not in the shower! I’m in your basement!! There is water spraying all over the place and it’s flowing out of your window! What do I do?”

I immediately wanted to cry. I felt so hopeless. My first home that I so proudly purchased just the year before was under water! And flowing out of my windows??? How much water was in there?? Fortunately I was able to gather my thoughts and tell him where he could find my plumber’s business card and my home insurance card. I keep these on my fridge for easy access in case of an emergency such as this.

I later found out that there was only 2 feet of water in the basement (pfewf!) and it was flowing out of the window because a pipe near a window broke and that force of the water flowing out of the broken pipe was so powerful that it broke my basement window and hence why the water was flowing out of it.

Fortunately, my father was able to contact all of the right people and the insurance company brought in a site restoration company and removed all of the water by the time I returned home from vacation. What a miracle! And my house was still standing?!? Although this was somewhat of a relief, it still completely ruined the rest of my holiday.

It turns out it was a good thing that my window did break because according to my hydro bill, I went through 95,000L of water that month. That’s 2 average sized swimming pools of water! Fortunately, most of that water flowed OUT of the house!

So you’re probably reading this thinking this damage is the point of my story. Nope!

When I returned home, the insurance adjuster interviewed me. She asked me very specific questions regarding the sequence of events which I only had to state second hand since I was not home. For instance:

“What time did you leave the house exactly to go to the airport?”
“Was there anyone still at the house after you departed?”
“What date and time did your father call you to inform you the house was flooded? Do you have record of this on your cell phone?”

Unbeknownst to me, she was trying to ascertain if my house had been unattended for longer than 48 hours (precisely!).

Why would she care about this? Because it is a little known fact that most insurance companies have a clause in their policy requiring that the insured property not be vacant for longer than 48 hours otherwise whatever damages occur beyond that time frame may not be covered.

So if you are away and you don’t have anyone checking in on your house every 48 hours or less, if anything happens (flood, fire, burglary etc.), you may not be covered by your insurance company.

I was never aware of this until a friend of mine brought it to my attention, so I checked my policy and low and behold, there it was in my policy!!!!!

Fortunately, in my case, my cat’s can’t go longer than 2 days without being checked in on so I was OK!

So the next time you travel for business or pleasure, if your home will be vacant, make sure it isn’t so for more than 48 hours. And for your own peace of mind, read that small print in your insurance policy.

Safe travels.

The Travelling Saleswoman Blog

Tips and Travel Adventures from a Savvy Saleswoman