🇬🇧 Safety and other problems during trips

Some people ask me about travel and hotel security. I have been creating my own itineraries for about eighteen years, going from big cities to cities so small that they didn't even have a bus station. And I never had any major security problems, either on the streets or in hotels. Of course it is good to take some precautions, but travel is a time to relax, even when it is work. Traveling tense and terrified is not very useful to enjoy the beauty and qualities of each destination.

I've already told you here how to create your own script for trips. It's very easy. With the internet you can search for hotels and everything, see the location and, for bigger cities, you can even spy on the neighbourhood through Google Street View.

I already got lost on walks. I have already stayed in a hotel (very good) on the side of a favela because I had to book at the last minute. I already had to call the hotel to send me a taxi because there was none where I was (I had been to a friend's band show). I had various uncomfortable experiences, but I never had any major safety issues while traveling.

My biggest problems that I remember were failures in hotel management.

I once traveled a week to a hotel where breakfast was optional and as I was going to wake up late most days so I asked for a reservation without breakfast, I had it only on Saturday and Sunday, and they charged me for the entire week for breakfast. Absurd!

In another occasion, I had made the reservation in advance and the hotel called me canceling because they had a hydraulic problem when I was at the Curitiba airport waiting for the flight to my destination. It was when I made the emergency reservation at the hotel near the favela. This hotel, inside, was much better than the other. There was a great hot tub to forget the world outside when I arrived from the event I was attending.

Once, with a “do not disturb” sign on the door, someone tried to enter my room. Luckily that there was an internal lock on the door, that it only opened about 10cm and the person left.

And once I was in a hotel with a small kitchen in the apartment, and I decided to use the microwave oven to make a lasagna, and the apartment electric key fell off. I was in the dark. But I called the front desk and they sent the electrician there quickly and I could prepare my dinner.

With experiences like these I learned the hotels I can't count on. And the failures are usually in hotels of large hotel chains, which, as far as I could see, are not concerned with maintaining a quality standard among their units. I sincerely hope that with this coronavirus situation, hotels will rethink their strategies and seek to create better experiences for their guests, in addition to creating a quality standard in hotels of the same flag in a hotel chain. The flaws I mentioned and other small flaws I have observed throughout my life are all very easy to correct and the fact that they occurred shows a lack of interest in the client's well-being.

Luckily there are hotels that are concerned with serving well and improving, and I hope they will survive this crisis and prosper.

I am available, as a consultant, to guide hotels, restaurants and many other businesses that want to offer an extraordinary experience to their customers and rethink their strategies, communication and brand management.

Nycka, the nomad