When Vacations Don’t Live Up to the Advance Billing

Travel to distant destinations is just great--until something goes wrong. Then, to alter an old saying, hell hath no fury like an adventurous traveler scorned.

Recently I received three complaints from travelers, one about American Airlines, one about Marriott hotels and one about Signature Tours, of Orange County.

American Airlines has now confirmed the substance of the complaint against it and apologized, while Marriott has dealt with the complaint against it in a generous way.

As for Signature Tours, its director of operations, Kenneth Blaker, says, “I feel we have absolutely nothing to apologize about.”

American Airlines first: Gail and Jim Wilburn of Malibu traveled over the Labor Day holiday to Colorado Springs, but when they set out to return, they found their airplane had a flat tire.

“As time marched on, we inquired about the further delay and the fact that it didn’t appear that anyone was working on the poor tire,” recalled Gail Wilburn.

“The unbelievable reason, we were told, was that the only mechanic who could do the job was at his vacation home. After all, it was Labor Day, but they were trying to get in touch with him.”

To make a long story short, skipping over often uncommunicative airline personnel and unprotected baggage, the Wilburns could not leave Colorado Springs until the next day. Still, they were given hotel and meal vouchers.

Responding to me for American Airlines, spokesman Tim Smith confirmed Wilburn’s account.

“This is the kind of thing we really hate to hear about,” he said. “It looks like bad things piling up on bad things, and handled poorly.”

Smith explained that American runs fewer than a dozen flights a day out of Colorado Springs, and contracts out its maintenance. The contractor, Falcon Aircraft, had no one there Labor Day, and American “has had some contacts with Falcon” since then about this.

American feels what happened is “appalling,” said Smith. “It’s not standard and not our norm.”

However, when I contacted Falcon, its account differed. Manager Neil Wickliff said a mechanic had shown up, but American didn’t have a replacement tire that day.

As for Marriott, it was accused by Bob and Gail Holmes, San Fernando Valley residents, of selling them a five-night stay at the Maui Marriott next spring for $599 for both, including a rental car, without notifying them in advance that the hotel would be under construction during part of their stay.

On Sept. 3, several weeks after he paid for the package, Bob Holmes said, “we received a letter . . . informing us that the resort would be undergoing a $74-million renovation project beginning April 1, 2000. . . . For at least two days, our stay would be subject to ‘concrete work and significant noise during the daytime.’

“This smells stronger than bad faith to me; more along the lines of fraud.”

Marriott doesn’t agree with that. Its spokesman, Ed Kinney, told me the hotel didn’t know when it first made its promotional offer that construction would begin April 1.

But, he said, Marriott hopes to keep the goodwill of all customers. “There should be no problem in their getting a refund.”

The next day, an even better solution was found. Gail Holmes is a schoolteacher, so she could not easily change dates. But Marriott agreed that the Holmes could stay, for the same price, at a Marriott hotel on Kauai, and the chain even threw in an extra night for free.

The Holmes are pleased. Their plans to celebrate their 10th anniversary in “paradise” have been revived.

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In the third case, Signature Tours took 101 people, including many from Leisure World in Orange County, on a 13-day, $1,899-a-person tour, including air fare, to Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong. It left Jan. 20.

Now, a group of Leisure Worlders headed by Ronnee and Chuck Zoffer is carrying on an impassioned campaign to get compensation because all three hotels on the trip were switched from the Meridien and Sheraton hotels listed in the tour brochure.

Signature’s Blaker insists that the hotels the party was moved into--the Century Park in Bangkok, Meritus Negara in Singapore and the New World Renaissance in Hong Kong--were just as good as the hotels the travelers believed they were booking.

Besides, he says, the switches were announced before the trip.

The dispute came to a boil in an argument at the Century Park. To the Zoffer group this hotel was inferior to the Meridien and was located in a “slum.”

Suffice it to say there are many talking points on both sides. I noted, though, that Blaker gave a different reason for the switches each of the three times I spoke with him.

But finally he told me he thinks the dispute really arose because the Zoffers and some others tried to get upgrades to first class on Cathay Pacific Airlines across the Pacific and were turned down. He said that Chuck Zoffer tried to use a prior affiliation with the Federal Aviation Administration to convince the airline to upgrade his seats.

Chuck Zoffer said that for many years, until he retired, he was regional airport coordinator for New York state, and had working relationships with the FAA.

He admitted he mentioned this when asking for an upgrade, but he denied that the refusal to grant it had anything to do with the protest against the hotel switches.

At some point during the confrontation at the Century Park, according to both sides, a woman who helped sell the tour, Madeline Sanders, asked the protesters just what they were expecting on an $1,899 trip?

This is a point, but still the fact that the prestigious name of Meridien was used to help market the tour is another key point.

On the trips it is currently arranging, by the way, Signature Tours lists the right hotels in its brochure.

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Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventures at (213) 237-7060 or by e-mail at ken.reich@latimes.com