Q: If you hear someone is planning to stay at a particular hotel, and you’ve had a horrible experience there, should you tell her? My friend posted on Facebook that she and her family had booked a trip to a resort in the Caribbean that my family and I stayed at last year. We got food poisoning from seafood we ate there, some jewelry was stolen from my suitcase and there were big cleanliness issues. Part of me wants to warn her, but part of me thinks I’ll just ruin her vacation if I do. I have no idea if she could possibly change her mind at this point without losing her money. But if she goes and has a horrible time, and I don’t warn her, I’ll feel terrible. A: This is tricky. Personally, I’d want to hear all the gory details, even if my vacation wasn’t refundable. I would then email the manager of the resort and ask what they’ve done to address the issues you encountered. I’d know to put my jewelry in the safe and skip the ceviche. But that’s just me. I’m sure there are people who’d rather not know.
I think you should hint at your bad experience but refrain from going into too much detail unless your friend asks. Send her a message saying, “Saw you’re going to XYZ Resort. We’ll have to compare notes when you get back — we were there last year and unfortunately had kind of a bad experience.” You’re putting the ball in her court. She can reply or just ignore you.
If she does ask for details, be honest, but be journalistic rather than melodramatic. For example, the way you described the problems in your question would be much better than, “It was a filthy hellhole, all the employees are thieves and the buffet was poison.” You want to give her helpful facts, not scare her out of her mind.
Q: Do you have to tip the curbside check-in people?
A: I would tip the skycap $1 or $2 per bag, even if your airline charges a separate fee for curbside check-in.
Why? Let’s indulge our cynical side for a minute here. We are talking about people who have the power to send your bags to the other side of the world if they “happen” to assign the wrong destination airport code. Should they do this? Of course not. Are you, in essence, bribing them not to? Kind of. But if you’ve actually experienced the annoyance of having a badly misdirected bag, you know it’s not worth the risk. Unless you travel with a ridiculous number of bags, we’re not talking about that much money; consider it insurance.
