How to reserve a beach trip with a travel agent in seven steps
When you reserve a beach trip with a travel agent at our office, the order of events never changes. There are seven steps, the traveler pays the office nothing, with no planning fee and no booking fee, and the hotel pays us a commission after your stay.
No payment is ever taken on this website. The hotel registers you at its own desk, takes the payment itself and sets its own cancellation terms, which you read in the quote before deciding anything.
Write in through the request form
Fill in the request form at any hour. You can also call on a phone day: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., or Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, Eastern Time. Sending it costs nothing and holds nothing.
Each letter read at the office
Our office reads every request. If something is unclear, such as your nights or the kind of room, we write or call back with questions. Requests that arrive Monday to Friday by noon Eastern are answered by 5 p.m. that day; later ones and weekend ones by 5 p.m. the next weekday.
Checking the hotel for a room
We ask the hotel whether a room is open for your nights and at what rate. That rate includes any nightly resort, amenity or parking fee the hotel charges every guest, so the figure you see later already carries it.
One page naming hotel and room
Then we write one quote. It names the hotel, which appears there and never on this website, plus the room and the nights. It gives the room total with those fees inside and lists the taxes the hotel will add, local charges such as beach tags, passes or parking, and the hotel's own cancellation terms.
A yes, a change or nothing
Read the quote at your own pace. Reply yes in writing, ask for a change, or simply let it go. Nothing is held for you until that written yes reaches our office, so there is no pressure to decide quickly.
Holding the room in your name
After your yes, we ask the hotel to hold the room in your name. The hotel may contact you directly for a card to secure the room or for an advance payment; that stays between you and the hotel and never passes through this site.
Arrival at the hotel's own desk
When the day comes, you drive to the shore, check in at the hotel's own desk and pay the hotel for the stay. Until you leave, our office stays reachable on phone days for any change to your plans.
After check-in and late changes
Once you check in, you are the hotel's guest, and questions about your room go to its front desk. If your check-in is within the next three days and something has to change, call us on a phone day. On a Wednesday, when the phone is off, write with check-in this week at the top and we answer within two hours between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
For cancellations after the room is held, the hotel's own terms printed in your quote apply. Our cancellation page explains how those terms work, and the contact page lists every way to reach us.
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