Friday, May 29, 2009

inFLIGHTout Travel Tip: Email Important Documents to Yourself

By Mike Grasso

Even what seems the most solid planning and preparation occasionally fails. Take for example a recent trip to Boston: I had booked a car rental with a reputable agency months in advance and armed myself with a copy my itinerary, evidence of such reservation. Well, through a series of unfortunate inflight mishaps, coffee ended up soiling my paper itinerary, causing it to be unreadable. So, when I showed up at the car rental agency, you guessed it, they for whatever reason, had no reservation on file for me, and I no longer had no proof anything existed either. I was ready to fly back home at this point. 

But, the magic of the Internet and an Internet capable mobile device saved the situation. I simply logged into my email account, scrolled to my "active travel" folder and bada-bing, with a sense of pride and accomplishment, I flashed the reservation to the front desk agent who quickly processed my reservation. 

The lesson: A hard copy of all your travel plans are great (airline, car rental, hotel, tours), but also storing an electronic copy, which can be accessed anywhere you have Internet capability, improves on that. With the e-versions of itineraries, I store them in email folders labelled, "active travel" and "past travel" which helps locate files quickly - such as when standing at the car rental counter in Boston.