From March 2015
The founder of Incantato Tours had a secret. As our students performed their farewell concert in the magnificent Santa Maria del Mar, then headed to an after-party disco celebration just for them, she knew that we were not flying home in the morning as planned. Lufthansa, the airline she said “never goes on strike” was indeed going on strike, grounding the 130+ members or our group, along with another 100,000 passengers across Europe.
While I will fondly recall Barcelona, Part I as the lovely paella luncheon on the sun-drenched patio overlooking the sea, Part II will always be the strike.
What happens when the tour is over but the airline is on strike? In theory, the tour company’s job is done and the airline takes over responsibility for stranded travellers, treating each member of the tour (which they know nothing about) as an individual traveller. So they book rooms in hotels spread across town as availability becomes sparse and re-route individual passengers on flights as they become available without regard to chaperones or keeping groups together.
The rest of this is going to read like a love letter to Incantato Tours, and especially founder Sandra, for turning a travel nightmare into safe passage home for everyone – and for doing it with class and style.
Sandra and her team took over the lounge area at our hotel: five people, multiple cell phones, four different languages, non-stop negotiations, laptops humming, wifi bandwidth being brought to its knees. I watched from behind my laptop screen in a corner of the lounge as they worked with the hotels to extend room reservations and keep the kids in the same place, with the airlines to pool vouchers and per diem allowances to cover the block of rooms, with restaurants to set up group meals, and with the bus company to provide transportation for – can you believe it – the special tour set up for the students to make their extended stay fun.
Once the logistics for staying in Barcelona were set, then began the work of getting everyone home. Lists upon lists of students, chaperones and extra parents (who would serve as additional chaperones, if needed) were ordered and reordered, grouped and regrouped as it was immediately apparent that no one airline could accept all 130+ members of our group.
Cell phones and languages were juggled with equal dexterity as openings were identified and reservations were begged, borrowed, or cajoled. Groups – 10 here, 15 there, 20 on yet another airline – started to come together, and always with at least one chaperone to accompany the students. After more than 24 straight hours of intense creative logistics, the first group of 31 students were scheduled on a Lufthansa flight and another group of 11 on Turkish Airlines through Istanbul on their way to LAX. At 3 o’clock in the morning, the Istanbul gaggle of groggy teenagers and their chaperones boarded the specially chartered bus to the airport, only to find that their reservations had been cancelled. Allegedly, a concerned parent called the airline to inquire about something and the overworked agent made a typo in the open record negating the entire group’s reservations and freeing up seats quickly grabbed by other stranded passengers.
The exhausted and supremely frustrated Incantato team pulled themselves together, refrained from crying or shouting, and got back on the phones to airlines, buses and hotels. By this time, me and my laptop were embedded with the Incantato group and I was sending a near-continuous email stream of updates to parents – and after the Istanbul incident, pleading with them to stay calm and (the hardest thing ever) do nothing. It all worked and after three more days, our group made it home in bits and pieces through Paris, Moscow, London, Madrid, Istanbul and (the winner for longest detour – and the subgroup I was with) Dubai.
“The Spain Trip” became an instant touchstone event for our school. In addition to all the wonderful memories from the tour crafted for our students by Incantato, we also shared the adventure of the return trip. Or, adventure for us – but a masterpiece of logistics, travel knowledge, and professionalism on the part of Sandra and Incantato. My daughter has since graduated and we are no longer “choir parents,” so I envy the students and parents who get to go on this year’s Incantato Tour to Italy. Bon Voyage and safe return!