“This isn’t the right time for people to be going to Thailand”

It is good to hear that Ms. Levy will be getting full credit from Overseas Adventure Travel to be applied against her trip to Egypt.

What surprised me was what she was told by the company and what the company told you.

It wasn’t disclosed in the article but it seems like Ms. Levy purchased a ‘travel protection plan’ from OAT since she would have received a voucher for a future trip from OAT from her ‘Cancel For Any Reason travel insurance.’ It seems like OAT sells a ‘travel protection plan’ that they designed with Trip Mate (not an inusrance company). I went to Trip Mate’s website and there is very little information on the site and it can’t compared to the websites that sells travel insurance policies.

One of the rules of buying travel insurance is never buy travel insurance from the travel provider because the policy is usually written in favor of the travel provider (i.e. if you want to cancel a trip for any reason, you want cash back not a voucher for another tour from the same vendor). One time, we took a tour and the ‘travel insurance’ policy was included in the price of the tour. Another tour, the total cost of ‘travel insurance’ for the both of us was $ 79 for a tour costing us $ 7,000. If you read the policies, there were very little benefits. What do you expect from a policy that was included or cost $ 40 per person! We ended up buying policies on our own for both of these tours.

The ‘Cancel for Any Reason’ policies from Travel Insured, Travel Insurance Services, Travelex (they have one policy that pays 100% of your loss), Seven Corners and Travel Guard will pay 70%, 75% or 80% of the trip cost. In addition, ‘Cancel for Any Reason’ policies from Travel Safe, Global Alert, Travelex (they have different policies..some pay 80% of the trip cost and some will 100% of the loss) and MH Ross will cover 100% of your loss.

Of course, the key is to read the policy to see what it covers, how much it covers and etc.

Doesn’t anyone research countries before planning trips there? Thailand has been in unrest for quite some time now. How long ago did she plan the trip?

@ Thalassa – “Doesn’t anyone research countries before planning trips there?”
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You are right…it like travelers that travels to the Caribbean during the hurricane season and act surprise when a hurricane cancel or interrupt their vacation.

I just want to update you on the situation in Thailand. My whole family lives there so i am in contact with them often.
Everything is quiet now and it IS the right time to go to Thailand. I’ve a lot of friends in the hotel and travel business. They informed me that everything is returning to normal and to entice tourists back, a lot of hotels are given discount and such and so other businesses. This is in Bangkok alone; other places like the beach towns such as Phuket do not have problems to start with.

I have traveled with OAT, and they have done a great job for us. Fortunately I haven’t had to cancel or rebook any trips, so I can’t speak to how they would handle this…and I’m a bit disappointed that they didn’t immediately handle this situation properly, and only did so once Christopher intervened. I personally feel they should waive the $50 change fee, but on the other hand, I don’t necessarily begrudge them this fee either. It’s certainly not their fault that Thailand erupted into civil war, and I’m sure they are losing a lot of money in having to cancel and re-book their tours. $50 is not a huge amount of money, and these are not inexpensive trips…spreading the pain just a little to their clients, for a situation that is not of their making, does not seem like an egregious crime to me.

@Thalassa – Thailand has had unrest, but up until recently it wasn’t bad enough to rule out tourism there. We don’t know how long ago the OP planned her trip, but when we booked our trip with OAT, we did so almost two years in advance. She may have done so as well. Two years ago the unrest in Thailand wasn’t nearly as bad, and Thailand was pleading for tourism as they recovered from the tsunami.

@PauletteB – what is your concern with OAT? I’ve had nothing but wonderful experiences with them. They really put on fantastic trips, and they do something that no other similar tour company does – they apply a portion of every trip cost toward their Grand Circle Foundation, helping the lives of the local people at the places you visit. They also include in their tours visits to local classrooms at most locations, where you can meet the children and teachers, and donate school supplies (we did this in rural schools in Peru and Galapagos Islands, and it was an incredibly fulfilling experience). So I’m curious what your issues are with them?

@ Monica – “If I was going anywhere overseas I would research the country and make sure it’s deemed “safe” by our government.”
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Even if the country is deemed “safe” by our government; there are countries that I won’t visit.

@Arizona Road Warrior – first, let me make it clear that I definitely do NOT fall into the category of “travelers that are perfectly content to allow tour operators, hotels, airlines, cruise lines, rental car companies and etc. to abuse them with poor services”. I’ve posted on this site long enough that I hope I’ve established some credibility as a reasonably frequent, definitely discriminating traveler. I’ve had bad experiences and good, and I am absolutely able to differentiate between the two, and never hesitate to speak up when I feel I am not getting what I paid for.

I assume I have also been posting on here long enough, and on enough topics, that nobody would mistake me for a shill or employee of OAT.

Therefore I trust that my comments about my experiences with OAT will be assumed to be credible. And I can tell you unequivocally that I had nothing but excellent experiences with them, both pre-trip, and during the trip. Was it perfect? No – but when you are doing adventure travel to foreign countries, which often don’t have the travel infrastructure that we’re used to in the US and Europe, you have to expect some bumps. But OAT itself did a fabulous job in every way.

This does not mean that everyone has had a similar experience with them. I read all the reviews I could find on them, and on our trips in particular, before I booked. I knew what to watch out for, and made some contingency plans accordingly. I also knew not to book my travel insurance with them – but they are certainly NOT the only travel company that offers insurance that benefits them more than the client. In fact, I’d venture to say that MOST travel companies I’ve dealt with, including cruise lines, offer sub-standard travel insurance. Christopher has written articles in which he strongly recommends never purchasing your travel insurance directly from the travel provider…and I follow that rule. So OAT’s less-than-optimal travel insurance isn’t an issue for me. It seems to be industry standard!

I would travel with them again in a heartbeat. Obvious care was taken in planning every detail of our trip; the guides that were with us 24/7 were among the best I’ve had anywhere (the one in Peru was better than the one in Galapagos, but both were great), the cultural experiences were rich; the logistics were about as good as could be expected.

It’s important to know, for anyone considering OAT, that this is a specific type of trip — it’s a fully programmed journey with everything planned for you, and not a lot of room for deviation. Most of the time this would not appeal to me – I tend to me an independent traveler and prefer to make all my own arrangements – but this was a trip we planned with a group, several of whom were not very experienced travelers, and they felt more comfortable having it all done for them. And as it turned out, we were all very happy – those who didn’t want to deal with plans and questions were comfortable with being “taken care of”, and the trip included enough adventurous activities as well as down-time that we independent travelers never felt bored or “over-programmed”. It was a great compromise.

I know some people have had bad experiences with them, and I don’t discount this. But I am simply here to state that they did an amazing job for us, and I would hate to hear of someone avoiding using them under the assumption that it will definitely be a bad experience. I have a group of 15 who would all recommend them without hesitation.

Whether or not OAT acted responsibly in allowing travelers to cancel, I don’t know. But I do trust their Bangkok staff’s assessment of the situation in Thailand as it matches my own firsthand experience in Bangkok over the last few weeks. Thailand is certainly not a “war zone” and I do think it is a great time to go to Thailand.

The U.S. has placed travel warnings on many countries which in my experience have ranged from being slightly overcautious to ridiculously overboard. I think all of us Americans living in Bangkok would agree the warning about Thailand is ridiculous. The protesters occupied a few square blocks in one part of Bangkok. If rioters occupied a few blocks of L.A., should there be a travel ban on California and Nevada? Because that’s about the equivalent in size.

It is nice that CNN and the BBC provide us with in-depth international reporting but when they report stories like this, we have to keep things in context.

Incidentally I remember a few years back when the sniper incidents were happening in Virginia and Maryland, Canada slapped a travel warning on the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It would have been absurd to say “this isn’t the right time for people to be going to the United States.”

@ cjr – “The situations are hardly comparable. For one, I doubt the Department of Transportation has issued travel advisories about the potential for hurricanes.”
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My point is that several travelers do not look at whole picture such as political unrest, transportation strikes, the weather, etc. and take preventative measures (i.e. not going to the destination, going at a different time of the year, purchasing travel insurance, etc) against these items when planning for their international vacations, etc.

Chris, I am another American long resident here in Bangkok; I’ve lived here 16 years as of the 16th of this month.

I don’t blame the lady for being concerned; looking at stuff on TV and in the print media can easily give a much different impression than what one gets on the ground.

Mind you, though I rarely get a kilometer from my home anyway, and almost never on a major road, I did keep in mind not to get a wild hair to head off towards the various trouble spots. That said, my apartment is only about three blocks one direction from where waves of protesters came at one point (but I live in a back lane, so didn’t know it until I saw it on the news), and about the same the opposite direction, where arsonists hit a shopping center (minor damage, as I understand it) and a bank branch diagonally opposite; the bank was destroyed. That was on May 19th, when the army moved in. BTW, I lucked out — I HAD to run an errand in that shopping center, and left there only about an hour-and-a-half before trouble arrived. But during by brief trip there, I didn’t see a single bit of trouble, not even a hint. And that was the worst day of all, the day dozens of places were burned and quite a few people killed or hurt.

Even at the peak of the trouble, in terms of area, the majority of the city was unaffected, except in terms of traffic. (But, then, when is Bangkok’s traffic EVER good?) I know a lot of folks whose daily routines take them to various parts of the city, and while a few changed their routes between home and work, for instance, to avoid trouble spots, and one guy I know had to temporarily move his office out of the business district, for the most part, disruption was minimal.

Staying out of trouble was almost entirely a matter of common sense. The protesters bases were well known — heck, they were on the news just about around the clock — and staying away from there and the surrounding area pretty much ensured one didn’t get caught in the middle of anything. Yes, there was the off-chance the protesters might move and you headed their way, oblivious to their move, but the odds for any one person to run into such a coincidence were very low.

As for the State Department, I’m on the embassy’s e-mail list, and I thought the warden (whom I don’t know) did a very good job of on the one hand erring on the side of caution while on the other hand not sounding as if the sky was falling.

The major concern was the uncertainty. Many observers, including me, thought at one point there was a real possibility of if not full-blown civil war, something close to it. That concern was predicated in some measure by the reports of disagreements within the government, including among security forces, what, if anything, to do. Some of my friends quietly made low-key back-up plans that in the extreme included evacuating the country, but not many. As for myself, I asked a friend who lives in the outskirts if I could come stay at her place should central Bangkok (where I live) turn into a war zone, and naturally she agreed. (Her neighborhood is about 15 miles from the nearest trouble area, as it turned out.)

I do find it interesting that I’ve not seen one single soldier, let alone any APC’s and the like. In fact, I haven’t seen all that many policemen — if anything, I’ve seen fewer than usual. Given the state of emergency, which remains in force as far as I know — though the curfew was lifted — I fully expected to see at least squads of police officers, if not soldiers, in the larger streets in my neighborhood. But I didn’t, in the event.

I write an occasional blog aimed mostly at friends, and now I’m telling them it’s safe to come back, there are great deals to be had, etc. I still remind them to use care, but then I point out I would say the same in a major metropolis such as Bangkok at *anytime* anyway — pickpockets, scams, etc. Were my Mom or Sister to want to come right now, I’d feel perfectly comfortable in saying “Come on.” (I would keep a bit of a closer eye on them than I might otherwise, admittedly.)

I’m sorry the lady had trouble, but the curfew *was* over by the time she had intended to be here — though I still understand her concern. As for the travel agency, well, it ended well, according to what you found out, but they could have been a little more cooperative, even on short notice. If I looked at one of the news networks and that was all I knew, *I* would have thought Bangkok was in flames, and I mean that. Had I been off in Hong Kong or Singapore or some such when the army moved in, I would have delayed my return until I could get on the phone to friends here to check things out.

You sure do an outstanding job, by the way. Thanks for doing it.

I’m one of the people who traveled with LeeAnne on our OAT trip to Machu Picchu and Galapagos last year. That’s the only trip she’s been on with OAT, but for me, that was my 14th. In FOURTEEN trips I’ve only been less-than-satisfied once – and it had nothing to do with OAT, it was due to one of the hotels in Egypt that had changed ownership. And OAT even refunded a portion of our trip cost due to the problems.

OAT has been an amazing company to work with, and I highly recommend them to anyone who enjoys fully programmed group travel. It’s unfortunate that there have been some bad experiences, but with a company that runs as many tours as they do, it’s to be expected that some will not go well. I don’t agree with all of their policies, but then, I don’t know of a single tour company that exists that is perfect.

You can also find reviews for their specific tours on their site – they don’t censor them. There are good ones and bad ones. And the good ones far outweigh the bad ones.

By the way, only half of the group on our trip were people we knew – the rest were strangers. But all 15 people ended the trip saying how happy they were, so when LeeAnne said that there were 15 people who would recommend them, she was referring to everyone in our group, not just the ones we knew beforehand.

Barbie, that’s a pretty harsh statement to make about a company you know nothing about. How many times have YOU traveled with OAT? And you want to put an entire company out of business, and cost all these people their jobs, and stop all the good they are doing for the local communities where they do their tours, just because you read a few bad reviews? Or, could it be that you are saying that because you have a childish grudge against LeeAnne because she’s pointed out some pretty silly posts of yours in the past? Come now, dear, fess up.

The good news is that most people on this site know you from your past history here, and don’t put a lot of weight in anything you say. So your nasty little comment about a company you’ve never worked with will be mostly ignored.

Thanks Christopher.

@ARW – just FYI, while it’s apparent you’ve put in a vast amount of time and effort into researching GCT, it appears to be in direct response to Sandy’s and my statements that we had good experiences with OAT, to contradict us. Just to be clear, neither of us has any skin in this game, so while I’m sure everyone appreciates all this research and detail, my sole point in posting was simply to bring to the table the DIRECT experience of someone who has actually traveled with them.

Also, please note that GCT itself has been the target of numerous complaints…but GCT is the owner of OAT, not OAT itself. OAT is its own entity, albeit owned by GCT. GCT itself has a long history of complaints and poor business practices by its many other companies, complete unrelated to OAT. Trust me, I did my research before I ever chose to travel with them. There are several GCT-owned companies I wouldn’t dream of using. But OAT itself did not have that history, and in fact has many positive reviews.

In any case, we feel it’s important to note that neither Sandy, in her 14 trips with OAT, nor I, with my 1 trip, ever had a single problem with them, and we wouldn’t hesitate to travel with them again. I think our direct experience should count as something. I also think it’s important to factor in all the reviews – negative and positive. That’s what we did, and we chose to go with them…and we’re glad we did. Every traveler must choose for themselves. The trip we chose (Peru/Ecuador) had far more positive than negative reviews, but there were some other destinations that seem to go the other way. We’ll be skipping those trips! ;-)

Sorry but everyone is completely overreacting to the “violence” in Thailand. It was concentrated in a very small area of the city – the news sites tend to exaggerate the situation to get better ratings. It is perfectly safe to travel to Thailand so long as you don’t go into the few locks of the city that are affected. I have lived there numerous times and have friends and family that currently live there and say that the situation is being blown out of proportion by the news agencies. The traveler’s just as likely to get killed or injured going to Egypt or just about anywhere else…