To Our Valued Clients,
Thank you for all your support and for trusting us with your travel needs. We appreciate you and look forward to serving you into 2022!
As you know, our industry came to a screeching halt with the institution of a mandated lockdown in 2020. Since the re-opening of some parts of the world began, we’ve noticed some changes in the travel industry. I’m thrilled to say we have successfully navigated and adjusted on the back end over the last several months to ensure you, our valued client, will still experience the same premier service you always have with Rising Star Travel.
What has changed?
Hotels have had to rebuild their staff and because the new staff lacks expertise, we have been forced to double and, in some cases, triple the amount of time we spend communicating to ensure they are prepped for the arrival of you, a premier guest! Similar time-consuming challenges apply to other facets of the industry including car rental companies having limited inventory, airlines cancelling flights, and driver shortages creating limited availability with our ground transportation partners. Also, labor is at a premium and as we rebuilt our organization to provide you with the exceptional service specific to only Rising Star Travel, we have also found that the caliber has shifted. We have very high standards for our internal staff and are now paying a significantly higher rate for the quality of support we have hand chosen to serve you into 2022 and beyond.
Our #1 goal remains the same – to provide effortless travel services for you, allowing you and your team to focus on everything else. Our team continues to strive for excellence as our standard service level in the industry and we are excited to continue to serve all of your needs!
Because of the changes in the current travel environment, some of our prices will increase in 2022.
Rest assured, overall, we are still well below travel industry averages as we don’t charge for many items that other agencies do, and those charges certainly add up. Things like basic credit card authorizations,
retrieval of receipts, after hours calls, etc., are all included. The Rising Star Travel Experience also includes exclusive services without an additional cost to you. I’ve listed those out below as many of you have been with us since your early days of touring and might not be aware of all the “extra’s” included and the manpower behind it. We pay for that manpower so you don’t have to.
Effective January 1, 2022, the following price increases will be in effect.
There will be a charge of $250 per month of cancelled hotel rooms. Example: canceling or adjusting the tour in June, July and August would result in a $750 fee to cover the RST staff hours needed to make the original bookings and then the cancellations/changes. This does not apply when you make a few changes here or there, but if the entire routing changes and we have to repeat all the work over again a second time, that will incur the $250 fee.
There are many additional amenities included in your Rising Star Travel Experience that no other agency provides. We will continue to offer these services to our full-service clients at no additional cost. We believe the difference between a good travel experience and an excellent one is hinged on the exclusive services that we have always included.
The Rising Star Travel Experience – exclusive services included, and how they impact both your tour and your bottom line.
★ 24/7 Support with an RST agent – we are always available to support you, regardless of where in the world you are and what time of day it is. You will always speak to an RST agent as we never outsource this support! We do not charge extra for this service.
★ Advanced Credit Card authorizations – An RST staff member will conduct an advanced cc auth which includes calling the hotel, requesting the form, filling it out/sending it back, calling the hotel again to confirm they received and finally, providing a copy to the tour manager – all for no additional fee. All other agencies charge a fee for a basic cc auth. This is invaluable to the tour manager as they don’t have to be present when other guests are checking in. If the guests do run into any issues, they have the approved document to easily show the front desk staff. If this service was not provided, the TM would have to escort every guest to the hotel to physically check the reservations in. If a problem did arise, the TM would have to call RST for a resolution, taking them away from more important responsibilities.
★ Receipt collection and uploading into your folio – An RST staff member will personally call our vendors to collect your receipts on your behalf. We will send them to your TM and accounting representative, ensuring you have everything you need for timely accounting and tax preparation. The hotels don’t always send them when initially requested so we spend the time to do this, so you don’t have to pay someone to do it.
★ Master Tour entry – An RST staff member will personally upload all of your travel confirmation information, freeing up valuable time for you to focus on other areas of the tour and allowing you to allocate your resources to more important activities.
★ Master travel documents – An RST staff member will personally create a master travel document for you, allowing you to quickly identify areas of the tour that still need reservations booked. The alternative would be having someone from your team collect and flip through each reservation to, circling, highlighting, and listing out what is confirmed and what is yet to book. Again, a time and money saver for you.
All of the above are unique and included for all Rising Star Travel travelers and will remain in place with no additional fee to the clients that we provide full touring travel services to. **The exclusion to this would be the clients that request abridged services, such as hotel only bookings. Those clients will be responsible for the hotel booking fees going forward.
We sincerely appreciate your partnership and look forward to serving you in 2022. If you have any questions or concerns about anything in this email, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly.
Your partner in effortless travel,
Shannon Radel