A safe pair of hands during Superstorm Sandy

I was caught up in Hurricane Sandy a few days after I flew out to New York. Although my plans were massively disrupted I was far more fortunate than many visitors to the city, let alone the average New Yorker who is still coping with the aftermath of the ‘superstorm.’

Partly I was lucky. I chose a hotel in midtown Manhattan that didn’t suffer any power loss, despite being just a few blocks away from parts of the city that had prolonged outages. In the unnaturally dark streets people were walking around with torches as they headed north looking for cafes, restaurants and even 24 hour pharmacies where they could plug in their mobile phones.

Two things in particular gave me great comfort. The hotel was truly a safe harbour during the worst of the storm. It wasn’t one of the big chains nor was it a top-end glitzy number. It was a standard tourist hotel offering unusually good value. Yet it had a simple, effective crisis management plan that made me and my party feel well looked after. It came in the form of a letter pushed under each and every room door outlining the plans the hotel had put in place for the storm together with practical advice such as closing all curtains and staying away from windows. It was low key and practical but it was enough to ensure us that the hotel management were firmly in charge and knew what they were talking about.

The other comfort factor was that I had booked my trip the old fashioned way via a travel agent. So all the hassle that comes with rebooking flights, hanging on the phone interminably racking up exorbitant roaming charges as well as haggling with the hotel was taken away from me. In fact because the travel agent is ABTA/ATOL bonded it meant I got the extra days in the hotel free of charge to me. The same was not the case for some of the unfortunate people I met who had booked via Trip Advisor and other ‘modern’ channels and who were quite frankly left to fend for themselves. While it might be fashionable to knock travel agents as an anachronism, I’m jolly glad I’d booked this trip the old fashioned way.