WHY "YOU” SHOULD BOOK WITH THE SENIORS HOLIDAY TRAVEL CLUB

We regularly hear from our club members that they’ve just booked their holiday or cruise directly with the travel wholesaler, after they have received a direct mail or email offering from them, or seen an advertisement in the paper or on TV that they have responded to. And often the wholesalers make it easy to do this, by having free call phone numbers, or "smart” phone numbers such as 1300 HOLIDAY (this isn’t a real phone number, just an example of how they try and make it easy for you to remember the phone number to call.) However, there are a number of reasons why you may be BETTER OFF booking through the Seniors Holiday Travel Club, and I’ll just list a few for you.

First of all, we get the same "deals” that our wholesalers offer to you – because if we didn’t, we would refuse to sell that wholesaler as a matter of principle. So you won’t have to pay more by booking with us.

Secondly, we offer a "full travel agency service”, whereas the wholesalers are really only interested in selling you their product, or perhaps flights to get you there and back, in some cases.

Thirdly, they have strict time limits on their staff taking phone calls, so they are very keen to "move you on” as quickly as possible, whereas we PRIDE ourselves on creating and even "crafting” the VERY BEST holiday for you, our club members. As an example, say you see a cruise from Barcelona to Rome advertised and you ring the cruise company to book it. You will end up with either just the cruise, or perhaps an airfare, to Barcelona and home from Rome. But of course, you’ll also need travel insurance, and you’ll almost certainly enjoy some time in Barcelona before the cruise, firstly to see this wonderful city, and secondly because you’ll probably have jetlag. Now, our TRAINED TRAVEL EXPERTS know this, and will suggest this to you, and book it for you, whereas the person in the "call centre” at the cruise company, who is probably in their twenties (yes, some of our staff are as well, but they aren’t really "call centre staff”, and they have travelled widely, and have been trained in what to offer our club members) won’t even realise that "jetlag” is an issue for seniors in particular. However, in addition to organising travel insurance and extra accommodation, we’ll also see if there is anything else that "takes your fancy” while you are "over there”, and you may indicate back to us, saying you’d love a few days in London, to see Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, the Tower and a cruise on the Thames, and you’d always wanted to ascend the Eiffel Tower and visit Notre Dame and the Louvre. So we’d suggest you visit London and Paris, with a Eurostar high speed train trip in between, to avoid going out to Heathrow Airport again, then we might suggest you take a train from Paris to Barcelona – because you can – the trains in Europe are AMAZING, especially by Australian standards, and have several days in Barcelona, then after you (finally) cruise from Barcelona to Rome, you may like a few days in Rome, then a few days in Tuscany and a couple of days in Venice, before finishing in Milan, where you could fly home from, after two or three days shopping there – now, which sounds "better”? And tell me if you really think that your cruising company is going to suggest all of this, or be able to book it, or even be aware that it EVEN EXISTS!!!

I guess another reason to let you know, and it’s certainly not a "secret”, but we hear regularly that our club members don’t know this, but just like real estate agents, we get paid commission by our wholesalers to sell their products, but if you book directly with them, we don’t get paid, so we wouldn’t be able to provide FREE membership and FREE newsletters and FREE expert travel advice and ESCORTED group tours and FREE presentations and so on and so on. But we must be doing something right, because some of our club members currently have ELEVEN separate cruises booked with us!