Every now and again, as someone who runs their own Travel company and sells all kinds of tours, I have to deal with people who have encountered problems during their stay in Iceland.

Sometimes these problems are just little nuances that can easily be fixed but sometimes the issues are pretty big and schedules get completely thrown off course.

These are my least favorite issues to deal with because sometimes there’s just nothing I can do to help. I always try my best but sometimes even my best intentions are just not enough to fix a hopeless situation.

The sad thing is that 95% of the time these mishaps could have been easily avoidable if the person would have just followed instructions or listened to advise.

What then makes it difficult to help people that find themselves in this situation is that often, their initial reaction is to blame the whole thing on someone, anyone, else. I cannot tell you how often I’ve been yelled at, called bad names, accused of horrible things, hung up on and threatened as a result of someone not reading their ticket.

By the way, I’m completely aware that some problems that people encounter are not at all their fault but a human or technical error on the other side or simply rotten apples that are bad at their jobs. For clarification, I’m not talking about those situations in this post. 

Not reading your travel documents

Probably the most common avoidable problem our guests encounter are missed pickups because they were not in the right place at the right time at the time of Pickup. Most often it’s because they didn’t read the ticket that came with their booking but sometimes they just get lost on the way to the pickup location or they don’t allow themselves enough time to get there.

Although every operator is different, the general rule is that no refunds are given in a situation like that. If it’s a bigger Tour, they will often allow you to re-book if they can but with expensive tours with limited availability that’s usually not possible.

This is particularly difficult when the missed pickup is for an airport transfer because often the only option to fix that is a taxi to the airport which costs considerably more than a bus transfer.

Although I can sympathize with someone’s disappointment in a situation like that, I can also see things from the operator’s perspective that came to where was promised at the time that was promised and the guest wasn’t there. So who should bear the cost? Should we as travelers no take any responsibility?

What can you do to avoid frustrating travel mishaps?

Before we go any further, let me just say that I know we’re all human and trying to do our best. Sometimes we just need a bit of extra help.

Do your research

I think we here in the Western hemisphere, largely thanks to the internet and the prevalence of American culture through all our mediums, think the world is a bit more homogeneous or uniform than it is.

We know that more or less everywhere we go we’ll find a McDonalds (except in Iceland – there’s none here) and that we’ll probably find someone who speaks English to communicate with

This brings us a certain level of comfort so I think we forget to do the research that we once did before we traveled. Or maybe we’re just asking different questions now. With Google in our pockets we also feel that if there’s something we should know about this new destination, we can just look it up when we’re there and then we never do.

I think a good rule of thumb is never to assume anything and be pleasantly surprised (or unpleasantly, depending on your disposition) when things are the way you expect them to be.

I think this especially applies to things like public transportation, opening times, traffic rules and local customs.

The fact that you’re reading this blog probably means that you’re one of those people who do their research, though, so you probably have this point down.

Listen to local advice

I’m not saying locals always know better than visitors. I know plenty of people here in Reykjavík that never leave the city and would probably freeze to death if they would ever find themselves on a glacier. I also know a lot of capable foreigners that are way more knowledgable than I am about specific niches of Icelandic tourism without the advantage of being born and raised here.

I can almost guarantee you, though, that someone who gives out information about Iceland for a living and has years of experience doing so will know about more about the generalities of visiting Iceland than any first time visitor. Or even second or third time visitor.

So if you get the advice that booking a tour 3 hours after you land at Keflavík airport or that doing an ice cave tour in Vatnajökull in a day from Reykjavík is not a good idea, there’s probably a good reason for it.

I can only speak for myself but I give out the advice that I do because I want you to come to Iceland, have a great time and return home in one piece.

Missing tours, losing money and getting into accidents is not a great time in my book which is why I try to advise you against situations where any of those are a possible outcome.

Read your travel documents

When you book your tours through us you will be reminded in the booking process that you need to read your tickets for information about your pickup. It says so in big bold letters on the confirmation you get too and if you book with us via e-mail, we have a special canned answer that we send to everyone where we remind you to look at your tickets.

It’s good to remember that your ticket is the PDF ticket that came with your invoice/confirmation e-mail.

Even with all these reminders, it happens very regularly that people miss their pickups because they didn’t read their tickets and didn’t follow the instructions there.

A few good points to keep in mind if you’ve booked a tour with a pickup

• The pickup usually starts 30 minutes before the departure time but this is not universal which is why you need to read your ticket. Sometimes the pickup starts 60 minutes before the departure and some operators start pickup at the listed departure time.

• The pickup window is usually around 30 minutes. What that means is that if the departure time is 10:00 and pickup is listed from 9:30,  you could get picked up any time between 9:30 and 10:00.

• If your pickup is listed between 9:30 and 10:00, for example, you need to be at the pickup location at 9:30 because you cannot know beforehand whether you happen to be at the first pickup location of the day or the last one. If you show up at 9:45 and you were the first pickup of the day, you have just missed your tour.

• In most cases, the drivers that handle the pickup cannot call you or go out to look for you because they have limited time to finish all their pickups and at the official bus stops in downtown Reykjavík they can only stop for 5 minutes while they get people or drop them off. There are some exceptions to this but this is particularly true with the cheaper bus tours.

Basically, you can summarize everything I’ve said here into one sentence: Read your ticket (not your invoice/confirmation) and follow the instructions. This is true with any tour you book through us and most of the tours you book through everyone else.

Finally, double check that you’ve chosen the correct pickup place and use the direction feature in Google maps or something similar to see how to get there from your accommodation. Also, remember to give yourself enough time to get there.

Get organized

Because I tend to have some attention deficit issues, I need to be super organized with everything I do. You would be amazed if you saw our family Google Calendar and I could write a whole blog about all the different organizational tools I use in my everyday life.

If you spend a little bit of time on getting yourself organized before your trip, you diminish the chance of silly mistakes later dramatically.

Before smartphones, I would always travel with a small binder where I had all my confirmations printed out and I would have my itinerary and notes at the front of it as a reference. I would always keep a xeroxed copy of my passport in it too and all kinds of information that I may or may not have needed. I always knew where this binder was and would add to it as I went along. It was just part of my planning and travel process to organize this binder in the days leading up to my departure date.

Today, I mostly rely on apps and my smartphone, which due to my work I cannot travel without.

Calendar apps like Google Calendar are brilliant because you can block out time, color code things and even add attachments (like your tickets) and then if you are forgetful – add reminders.

Another option would be to use a service like Google Drive or Dropbox to keep all your tickets in one place or folder so you don’t have to scour your e-mail inbox last minute for information about your tours.

Finally, you could look into using a travel-specific app to manage your itinerary. I use an expensive app designed for travel professionals (that we use for our guests) but you could look into something like Google Trips or Tripit.

Travel insurance just-in-case

To me, traveling without travel insurance is like traveling in a car without a seat belt. It’s no big deal if nothing happens but if you get into an accident, a seat belt can be the difference between a scratch and a serious life-threating injury.

I know that insurance companies get a bad reputation and I’m sure their reliability depends on where you live and what is available to you but I have personally had to make claims because of lost property and different issues that have happened while I was traveling and not once have I regretted the fact that I had insurance.

It won’t fix everything but a lot of issues that people encounter are covered under most travel insurance plans so it just makes sense to have one.

Some final thoughts

Making mistakes is a part of the human experience and we all make them, myself included. We can use tools and methods, like the ones I’ve mentioned in this post, to try to avoid them the best we can but if that doesn’t work, we have to take some personal responsibility and hope that we learn something to avoid making that mistake again.

When I was 19 and living in England, I once showed up for a flight a day late. I just mixed up the dates and never bothered to look at the ticket to double check. It was no one’s fault but mine and I remember a lot of crying at the time and using almost all the money I had in the world to fix it. I literally ate spaghetti and ketchup (the only thing I could afford) for every meal during that trip.  Ever since, though, I always double check all dates when I book flights so despite the heartache I learned a valuable lesson.

Again, I can only speak for myself but when someone calls me because they’ve made a mistake I always try to find a solution to the issue, regardless of whose fault it was. When the person calling is screaming and calling me bad names from the get-go, it makes it that much harder for me to help.

So accepting the fact that you made a mistake and being polite about it is always going to help you get better service. Just something to keep in mind.