With so much uncertainty ahead with the economy, skyrocketing fuel prices, and the drastic drop of the Dollar against the Euro over the past couple years; many people have been concerned about planning travel.  In fact, during the 2008 season, most of Europe has seen a sharp drop in tourism for these very reasons. 

We at DiscoverSoriano haven’t felt the negative impact. To the contrary, while many in the industry have reported a 60% or more decline in business, we sold out our entire 2008 season.  As the dollar weakened and the economy in the states became less certain, our bookings sharply increased.

Our guests repeatedly tell us that they chose us because we offer so much at such a fair price, because our pricing is all-inclusive, and because we protect our guests from currency fluctuations.  In a nutshell, while travel-related costs have been skyrocketing and the world economies have slowed, we have found a working formula to keep the prices low compared to others and guarantee that our guests will pay the price they are quoted, no matter what.

With that in mind, as our guests experience our little slice of life in Italy, they very often ask us both why and how we are able to afford to do it.  Well, here’s how:

1. All-Inclusive Travel means you can completely budget your vacation

This addresses the WHY question.  We want you to feel comfortable before you come.  When our guests book with us, they know that it is all covered.  When you look at our prices, at first glance they may seem higher than travel on your own or the traditional budget big bus tours, but all of the hidden costs with those are what really get you in the end.  With the big budget bus tours and travel on your own, your initial costs can easily double or triple once you start factoring in food that is not included (our single greatest cost), additional transportation costs, entry fees, ‘optional’ guided tours, etc.

To the contrary, we include everything to the point that you could conceivably spend a week in Italy with DiscoverSoriano and never pull your wallet out of your pocket.  All the while, you will have an amazing first-class experience in Italy like no other.

2. Location, ownership and direct sales can mean huge savings

This addresses the HOW question. Once our guests have spent a week with us, they really get a sense of everything we offer for the price, and many ask us how we are not losing money at our prices.  It all comes down to our location, ownership and direct sales.

Location is a huge factor.  We are in a border area between Rome, Tuscany and Umbria… extremely close to all of it, but not specifically in any of those places.  Our area is not as touristy as many of the places we go to on excursions, so our home base costs are much lower than they would be if we were based in one of the tourist traps.  The benefits of this are twofold.   This allows us to offer our guests more of a real Italian cultural experience, and we have lower costs that we can pass on to our guests in the form of offering more for less money.

Ownership is another big factor.  We own most of what we offer.  We do not operate as agents for a series of tourism service providers, so we don’t have to tack on profit for the providers.  This allows us to keep costs down and pass it along in the form of lower prices and better service.

The vast majority of our marketing is internet-based, direct to our guest.  We don’t have the massive overhead associated with printing and distributing brochures to travel agents, taking ads out in countless travel magazines, etc.  Furthermore, while we do work with agents, 90% of our guests book directly through us, so commissions are a very small part of our overhead.  Again, this allows us to keep prices much lower while offering much more.

3. Our prices are fixed in your currency.

Suppose you are an American, and last October you had planned a trip to Italy for August on your own or with a company that charges Euros, and you had to pay 90 days before your arrival.  Assume the budget  for your trip will have been 2,100 Euros per person.  In October, you will have figured that the trip would cost around US$2900.  But when May came around and it was time to pay, the dollar had dropped against the Euro, and those 2,100 Euros actually cost you US$3,360.  If you were travelling as a couple, nothing about your trip would have changed and no prices would have necessarily increased, but the cost of your trip just went up almost a thousand dollars.

DiscoverSoriano.com protects you against this by offering all-inclusive packages at a fixed price, in your currency.  The price you are quoted the day you book is the price you will pay, period.  If you want to pay in US Dollars, once you have booked and made your deposit, you are locked in at that price in US Dollars, no matter what happens in the currency markets in the following months. If you prefer to pay in Australian Dollars, the price remains as such.  British Pounds are guaranteed in British Pounds, and Euros are guaranteed in Euros.

We’re able to do this because we have operating costs in both Euros and Dollars, plus we have some guests that pay in US dollars, others in Australian dollars, others in Euros, etc.  Doing so causes us to make more money one week and less another, but in the end, it all balances out for us and our guests get greater peace of mind.

Have you ever been on a vacation and come home having the feeling that you need a vacation from your vacation?  Have you ever phoned home and said something to the effect of ‘We’re exhausted, but we’ve seen this, and that, and that, and that, and that’?  When you plan trips, do you juggle your itinerary to try to fit things in?

If the answer to any of those is YES, read on.

Growing up, my family traveled quite a bit, and in my adult life I have continued that tradition with my own family.  I’ve been to many places and sat at the foot of countless landmarks.  Still, if I look back at it all, it amazes me to recognize where my fond memories come from, and which vacations I count among the best.  That said, I’ll give you the short list of my vacation memories to build up to the point of this article.

During my first time to Italy in 1983, I visited Rome, Florence, Milan, Positano, Pisa, Modena, and Calabria.  I visited each and every landmark in each of those places.  However, my strongest and fondest memories come from sitting outside of the home of my friend’s grandmother in Calabria. I watched the goat and the chickens run around… the children playing n the streets.  The sound of a family speaking a language I didn’t understand.  The little old lady wearing black and sitting in front of her door all day as she mourned her husband.  I remember seeing feathers on the ground while noting a missing chicken… and being told we were having chicken for dinner that night.  I remember the sweet look on ‘Nonna’s’  face as she would serve me and say MANGIA with that huge smile of hers.  I remember the smells and the sounds as though were yesterday.  As I think about this experience from 24 years ago, I take a deep breath and smile.  I have no such fond memories of any landmarks… just memories of having seen them… as though they were merely checked off a list.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am happy to have seen those landmarks, but they don’t define the vacation.  Rocco’s grandmother had a much greater impact.

My first trip to England was two years later.  Again, I saw most of the ‘must-see’ sights.  But other things happened on that trip.  I proposed to Paola, and we went to Manchester for her friend’s wedding.  Besides the obvious wonderful memory of having become engaged to the love of my life, my fondest memory of that trip was an evening in her friend’s house laughing with friends.  I remember going downstairs and walking to the corner store for something and noting how incredibly British everything was.  It was an evening of full immersion into British culture.  It was a great day, and far more memorable than having seen Buckingham Palace a few days prior.  Again, I am happy to have seen the sights, but they did not define the trip.

I was motivated to write this article as I was looking at part of an itinerary of a soon-to-be guest of ours.  It was hectic and filled with tons of landmarks and little time in between.  I told her about my first trip to Paris.  It was a business trip that left me very little time to see anything.  Still, we squeezed in the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame.  On our last day, we had a 3 hour window of time before our flight during which I made a mad dash through the Louvre… Saw Mona, and thought how great it would be to spend a week in this museum.  Still, when I think about that trip, I think about a lunch we had with some clients outside of the city in a small farmhouse Bistro.  I got a sense of the culture.  That lunch is a fond memory.  The Eiffel Tower was… well, The Eiffel Tower.  It was merely checked off.

On yet another business trip, I was in China.  The Great Wall was fascinating.  The Forbidden City was amazing.  But there was a night in particular in Xiamen that we had dinner with associates and their families that really sticks out in my mind.  We talked and talked and talked.  I learned so much about the culture and the people I was sharing a meal with.  I learned their political perspective, their family values, and their view of the world.  It was such an incredible experience.  The great wall was… Great.  But that dinner defines not only my trip to China, but a new understanding and appreciation I gained for their culture.

I could go on and on.  I have similar stories for so many other places, so many other trips.  I’ll convey just one more trip to finish my point.

Seven years ago Paola and I went to Bora Bora for a week. When we got there, we quickly learned that there is absolutely nothing to do on the island.  Everything there is to see can be seen in a morning.  You can swim, snorkel, boat and lay out… period.  When it gets dark, there are only two things to do:  Sleep and… well, it is definitely a place for couples.   And that is all we did.

To this day, I count Bora Bora as the best vacation of my life.  I also count it as the vacation in which we saw and did the least.  It was 0% landmarks, 100% experience.  0% itinerary, 100% relaxation.

I have never before, nor since come home from a vacation so recharged!  In fact, I keep a large fish bowl full of Bora Bora sand and shells on my desk as a reminder.

All of these experiences are of course my own, and they may or may not fit your personality.  However, in watching our guests, I see the same thing time after time.  None of our guests in Soriano have ever written us about their wonderful memories of The Trevi Fountain. They write us about their wonderful memories of ‘that evening sipping wine in Piazza’, or ‘that time we had pizza together’, or the little oddities they experienced here and there.  It is the culture that grabs them, not the landmarks.

In fact, it is never the things you plan on that define the trip.  It is always what happens in between.  So if you plan a trip with a schedule loaded with monuments and landmarks, you may not have enough time in between to make those wonderful memories… and you are more likely to go home needing a vacation from the vacation than relaxed.

If you are planning a trip to Italy (or anywhere for that matter), try to fight that urge to get it all in.  If you try to control the experience, you will miss something special.  Slow down and let the experience of a wonderful new culture come to you.  I promise it is worth it.

We’ve been renting homes to travelers for over a  year now, and I’ve noticed two distinct groups of people: ‘Italy first-timers’ and ‘Italian culture chasers’.  In all honesty, some, albeit very few, of the first-timers truly resemble the culture chasers. 

The ‘first-timers’ are the people that have finally made it to Italy for

On Tuesday, December 19th at around 4:30 PM we sat at the departure gate in Los Angeles waiting to board our flight.  It had already been a very long day for us, and we were looking forward to a 10 hour flight to London with a connection that would take us to Rome.  It was me, Paola, our 17 year old daughter, and our 7 year old son.

I remember thinking and commenting at that time that if all went well, we would be getting in our rental car at Rome in about 16 hours, then make the hour and fifteen minute drive to Soriano, and finally be in our own beds.  The worst case scenario was that we would miss our connection.  After all, we only had a one hour layover at London Heathrow, so we might miss our connecting flight and have an additional 2 hour delay.

That worst case scenario was a dreaded thought at the time, but looking back, all I can say is:  IF ONLY!

The flight to London was uneventful.  I didn’t sleep, but I rarely do.  Still, I had a decent seat and the crew was good, which can make all the difference.

About 20 minutes before we were scheduled to land, however, the announcement came over the intercom stating that we would have to circle over London for 45 minutes before landing.  Oddly, he also assured us that we had enough fuel… duh!

OK, at this point we figure we will either miss our flight or with any luck, our connection will be late, too… IF ONLY!

The Adventure Begins
We landed.  We were about an hour late, but we had been told that many flights were also late. Cool.  We got off the plane and proceeded to the transit area where we would find our gate and figure out if we would make our flight.  It is 6:30 AM on Wednesday back in Los Angeles.  I have now been up for 24 hours.

The moment we got to the transit area, we were greeted by hundreds and hundreds of people looking just as confused as us.  Something was clearly not as it should be.  We couldn’t find our flight on the monitor, so we proceeded to an ‘Information’ line.    I kept looking at the monitor and every few seconds the word ‘CANCELLED’ would appear next to a scheduled flight.  Not good.

After a bit a woman comes to us with a sheet of paper.  She said that some flights are being cancelled due to fog.  As it turns out, ours was one of them.  She explained that we would need to proceed to baggage claim, get our luggage, and then go to the British Airways ticket desk to get ourselves rescheduled on the next flight to Rome.  At this point we are not happy campers.   How inconvenient that we have to get our bags, go through customs, and navigate Heathrow to get a new ticket… only to come right back here.  Why can’t they reschedule us here? Whatever… we’ll deal with it and get to Rome a bit more tired… IF ONLY!

We made the trek to baggage claim and waited… and waited… and waited.  No bags.  Finally someone explains that we were given bad information.  Our bags were in ‘holding’ and would be automatically placed on the next Rome flight.  Well, that certainly makes more sense.  He explained that we did still need to clear customs and go to BA ticketing.  So we left.

We went through customs and entered Heathrow.  For those that don’t know, Heathrow is enormous and very confusing.  We walked and walked and walked and walked to find British airways ticketing.  When we got to the general area, we were greeted by thousands of people crowding the terminal, looking as confused as we did.  We finally found a BA employee who explained where the line was for ticketing.  She warned us that the line was ‘dreadfully long’ due to the fog problems, and that everyone we saw in the terminal was in the same situation as we were.

We went to the end of the line, and it was by all definitions ‘dreadfully long’.  We figured that we would never make the next flight.  I was then informed that what I believed to have been the end of the line was merely a break in the line to allow people to cross to the exit.  The end of the line was ‘down there’.  As I ventured ‘down there’ I would get to what I thought was the end, only to find it wrap around another corridor… and another… and another… and another.  My conservative estimate is that the line was roughly 3/4 mile long.  This does not look good at all.  As we stand in the line, we move forward roughly 50 feet in a half hour.  It didn’t take long to do the math on this one and figure out that we were not going anywhere today.

I decided to venture toward the front of the line to hover and gather all of the intel that I could.  The first thing that really struck me was that all of the airport employees were just as confused as we were.  They were overwhelmed and had no plan of action.  They were winging it.  The next thing to happen was ‘The letter’.  They began to hand out apology letters.  I truly felt bad for these people, as they were dealing with thousands of angry travelers while they were doing the best they could…. And the best they could do at this point was an apology letter.

At one point, toward the front of the line a British Airways employee who was helping another passenger asked me if I had a pen.  I said I would go grab one for him, so I started running back to Paola, who was way back in line still.  I got the pen, gave it to the man, and he told me to stay there next to him.  As it turns out, he was British Airways Executive Vice President for the Americas, who just happened to have flown in from New York that day.  He told me that standing in that line was an act of absolute futility, and then got out his cell phone and called his New York office. He got us rescheduled on a flight the next day and said that BA would pay for our hotel that night.  He scribbled some information on paper and gave me instructions.  WOW!  Good thing we had that pen. 

I got Paola and the kids out of the line.  The apology letter had a list of hotels, but I figured that with the thousands of people that were stranded, we would be wasting our time trying to get one of those.  When I am in London, I usually stay at the Paddington Hilton because the Heathrow Express takes you straight to Paddington station in 15 minutes, and the hotel is an escalator away from the trains.  We quickly booked a room there, called some close friends that live in London and boarded the train.

We spent a nice evening with friends we would not have otherwise seen.  This wasn’t so bad, after all.  We’ll be rested and on a flight to Rome tomorrow… IF ONLY!

That night we were watching the news, and the Heathrow situation was the top story.  80,000 passengers were stranded at Heathrow.  All flights that day after we had arrived had been cancelled, and they expected the fog to last for a few days.  Already, 350 flights had been cancelled for the following day.

We tried to call British airways and the airport over and over to see how we were affected, but their lines were beyond capacity and there was no hope of getting through.  Even the New York office was impossible.  I tried their website, but their system wasn’t responding to the load.  We had no way of getting any information.  The following morning nothing had changed, so we figured our only option was to go back to Heathrow to get the lay of the land.

We woke up (Paola couldn’t sleep that night)   and quickly got showered and to the trains..  Once we arrived at Heathrow, we found that gigantic line again, only now it was worse!  Now there was a giant line that wrapped around outside in the freezing cold fog that brought you to a tent where they would give you a ‘Lottery Ticket’ that would give you the right to be in the ‘dreadfully long’ line.  OK, I’ll hover at the front again and gather intel!  All the while, we are trying to call the numbers we have for BA, but there was just no hope of getting through.

I was able to find out that our flight was, in fact, cancelled.  At best, we might get out in a day or two.  At this point we decided the best bet was to get off the Island any way we could.  The first thought was to rent a car.  We quickly found out that while we could do that, all of the ferries were backed up with people that had the same thought we had.

The next idea was train.  We could take the EuroStar to Paris (Through the Chunnel) then get a train or a car in Paris to Rome.  Or perhaps we could fly from Paris to Rome.  We made some calls and were told that the flight would cost us around $2,600.00.  Screw that… we’ll do the train.  Some calls were made, and we had instructions and times.  We would get to the station in London, and then purchase the tickets through to Rome.  We would take a night train, and arrive in Rome the following morning.  Cool… IF ONLY.

We got our tickets for the Eurostar, but as we entered the station, we learned that you are technically in France at that point, and you had to purchase tickets outside the station.   Unfortunately, we were not allowed outside the station at that point, so we had to buy the tickets once we arrived in Paris.  Keep in mind that we were told that we might not be able to get a ticket for the Rome train, so time was of the essence. 

During the train ride to Paris, we kept calling British Airways in hopes of getting information.  Remember, our suitcases are somewhere at Heathrow, and perhaps they could get us on a Paris-Rome flight.  Nothing. 

Finally we arrive in Paris and start to make a run for the subways so we can get to the station where the Rome train leaves from and try to get on it.  I decided to try British airways one more time and somehow I finally got through.    The woman on the other end suggested that I should go the airport and see if BA would get us on a flight.  She said there were two flights for Rome, but she couldn’t do the booking.

With a quick change of plans, we took the subway to the airport and walked and walked and walked to find the BA desk.  When we got there, we found another long line.  We left long lines of people trying to leave London, and here we found a long line of people trying to go TO London.  Again, I hovered for intel.  Unfortunately, I don’t have much luck finding helpful French people.  After a bit, a very nice Hungarian lady from a different airline decided she wanted to make my day a little better.  She was able to produce four tickets to Rome that night for us.

We boarded the flight and made it to Rome.  We finally made it to Soriano at 1:00 AM Friday morning.  All in all, our day had started 58 hours prior.  That moment back in Los Angeles when I dreaded the thought that my bed was 16 hours away was actually 48 hours away.  It never felt so good.

We left Los Angeles on December 19th. We were supposed to arrive in Soriano on December 20th.  We arrived on December 23rd.  The following day one suitcase arrived.  All of our Christmas presents are somewhere in London.  On December 26, another suitcase arrived.  As of now, we have no information on the other four… which have the presents.  I‘m at the point that I am driving to Rome daily to check for the suitcases (they rarely answer the phones), and have gotten on a first name basis with many of the customs Agents at FCO :-).
 
The funny thing is that while it was crazy, especially with a Teenage daughter and a 7-year-old son, we were all troopers and laughed all the way.  Oddly, it is a wonderful memory, and I am sure that I will look back at this as one of the best Christmas Holidays of our lives.