Wherever and however you travel there’s likely to be tax free opportunities but are they all good value?
Whether it’s designer clothes, jewelry, perfumes, watches, the latest electronic gadgets or duty free cigarettes and alcohol the 2014 taxfreetravel guide shows you the best places to shop and where to avoid.
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Cliff Chapman
www.traveljunkies.com
Great travel deals around the world
Bargaining is a two way process and it’s important that both sides feel they have done well from the bargain.
Don’t try to screw every penny out of the deal. A dollar to you is trivial but is more important to the seller. Accept that they will try to rip you off but that’s part of the game. If you don’t want to play the game, just walk away, or better still, avoid the place altogether.
Never make the first offer, always get the seller to state their price first.
Don’t buy the first time round. Shop around to get an idea of the going prices. It will send a message to the seller that you might buy from someone else, and it will make your bargaining easier.
To get the best price just walk away. Tell the seller you like it but it’s too expensive. You’ll find the price goes down more the nearer you are to leaving. The seller needs to sell more than you need to buy.
And remember it’s their way of life and they have to make a living. So join in and enjoy yourself. You can always walk away.
Please share this and keep everyone happy 🙂
Cliff Chapman
traveljunkies
Maybe you’ve decidided that a group you belong to isn’t right for you any more and you want to leave.
Linkedin doesn’t make it easy, until you know how.
1. Go to the LinkedIn sign in page and login using the email address and password associated with your account.
2. Click the “Interests” tab at the top of the screen and click on “Groups”. You will be taken directly to the “Your Groups”.
3. Click the group that you want to leave from under the “Your Groups”. You will be taken to the groups LinkedIn page.
4. Click the “More…” tab at the top of the group page, and select the “Your Settings” option.
5. Click the “Leave Group” button in the bottom right corner to complete the process.
Alaska sounds cold to most of us. But in the short summer time between June and August Alaska offers almost 24 hours of sunlight. Plenty of time to enjoy an abundance of animals, blooming flours, stunning mountain sceneries while the peaks are covered in snow but the valleys are pleasantly warm. Alaska is an outdoor heaven as there is more wilderness, backcountry trails and mountains to hike you could think of!
Here is my TOP 5 for travelling Alaska:
You might have heard about the cruise lines that travel to Alaska every year providing hundreds of people at a time an opportunity to see glaciers and mainly sea life with seven course meals. Not your style? Overlanding has become synonymous with places like Africa. But now it’s time that North America with places like Alaska and Western Canada is providing these adventurous and off-the-beaten path style of trips to cater for a different style of travelling.
Have you ever slept out under the stars or in a place that everywhere you look has no roads and is surrounded by mountains, rivers and glaciers? This experience should not be missed. The Denali Highway is a perfect launching point for such an adventure! It’s time to venture through the bush and hop over creeks while being carefully watched by the local caribou. Take a boat upstream towards the Maclaren Glacier. This hike leads to a great vantage point to view the Maclaren glacier and eat wild blueberries. The following morning you’ll take a picturesque 2-hour canoe trip casually paddling your way back to a rustic lodge.
Ever watch one of those films on extreme mountaineering and wondered if you could handle such an adventure? Well, here’s your introduction to the task. Wrangell/St. Elias is largest national park in North America and home to 9 of the 16 highest peaks. Climbing on the Root Glacier is all about technique and fun. Your guide will teach you about the 3-anchor system and the figure-8 knot that will keep you safe. A full day walking the glacier and climbing with your fellow adventurers will allow you to tick off a few boxes on your bucket list.
The fairly casual and moderately strenuous activity of sea kayaking can take you many places other types of craft cannot. With a full day ahead of you, visiting and exploring the massive icebergs of the calving Columbia Glacier is hard to pass up. With a 2-hour wildlife spotting boat ride there and back, you spend the other six hours paddling, photographing, and gawking at the enormity of these turquoise Titanic-sinking pieces of frozen water.
The animals in Alaska have a quite small window of opportunity to prepare themselves for the upcoming winter. You’ll see a bear eating on hundreds of thousands of berries, a beaver working hard to collect plants and stabilize their dams and lodges, salmon building up their fat reserves, or even an arctic ground squirrel scurrying around collecting nuts and fruit for their den. These animals can be seen on an overland adventure all day and night. Sometimes they’ll even make an appearance at camp to check out what’s for dinner. Well, usually they stay at a safe distance showing respect. If wildlife is something you get excited thinking about sitting in you recliner, then Alaska needs to be on your to do list!
Left Germany end of 2010 to backpack West Africa. After feeling the freedom of the road applied for a tour leading job and since then has been driving overland trucks from Cairo to Capetown and Rio de Janeiro to Quito. After remodeling an old school bus into an ultimate overland vehicle and starting her on adventure company together with Dave (who she met travelling and working in Africa) Natalie is on the road again: This time to enjoy the beauty and wilderness of Alaska with like-minded people.
If you’d like to join Natalie and Dave visit their website … www.infiniteadv.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/infiniteadv
Twitter: @infiniteadv
A recent report by the City of London’s Police National Fraud Intelligence Bureau has revealed that holidaymakers are falling victim to £7 million worth of travel scams each year.
Over a 12 month period over 4,500 cases of holiday booking fraud were reported. Whether you’re distracted by pick-pocketers or fooled by bogus websites, there are a number of popular scams that catch out tourists from all over the world.
However, there’s no reason to let this put you off booking or taking a holiday – many of these scams are easily avoidable by being extra vigilant and especially careful with your belongings and surroundings when holiday planning and travelling.
To help you stay in the know, here’s ten of the world’s most popular tourist scams, along with some advice on how to beat them:
A distracting splat
This popular scam is particularly prevalent in South American countries, but has claimed victims all over the world. A traveller may feel a wet splat on their shoulders, head or back – usually mustard, mayonnaise or some kind of other substance that’s sure to feel sticky and unpleasant. “Concerned” by-passers will offer to help clean you up, potentially relieving you of your bag or valuables at the same time. This is a classic distraction, and similar tactics can involve anything that might suddenly distract you from your bag or pockets.
How to beat the scammers: Try not to get fazed if you find yourself dolloped with sticky goo and politely, but firmly, refuse the help of anyone in the vicinity. Don’t take off your bag until you have moved to a quieter area out of site of the potential scammers. Also, keep money and other valuables tucked away in money wallets under your clothes rather than in your pockets so they cannot be easily reached.
This trick involves presumed authority figures such as police officers approaching unsuspecting tourists, giving them sudden and unfair fines for small infractions that may not even exist in that country, like stubbing out a cigarette on the street. These figures are often fakes who pocket the cash or, even worse, take tourists details to be used for fraudulent activity later on. Similarly they may pull you over to ‘check’ your car, robbing you in the process.
How to beat the scammers: Always ask for identification when approached by these kinds of authority figures. If in doubt, call the local police station to confirm whether they are legitimate.
Particularly popular with tuk tuk drivers in South East Asia, you may find when asking to visit a certain temple or landmark that your driver will ‘kindly’ inform you that it’s closed that day. Instead, they know of another great tourist spot that you’d like instead. It’s highly likely that this is a scam, which could result in the taxi driver getting a cut of your entry for this other attraction and you missing out on your plans for the day.
How to beat the scammers: Stick to your original plans and don’t let them convince you to go elsewhere – at worst you’ll simply need to make another taxi journey if your tuk tuk driver was being genuine.
Scams can strike before you’ve even left home – often at the early booking stage of your trip. Websites advertising private accommodation may look legitimate, but many travellers have been left stranded when they’ve arrived at their destination to find out that their holiday home doesn’t even exist. Not only are you left out of pocket for the money you’ve paid, but you also then need to fork out cash for more accommodation.
How to beat the scammers: Make sure to check for reviews when possible – don’t just rely on testimonials on the site. If other consumers have had problems or have been the victim of fraud, then it’s likely they’ll have posted details about their experiences online. Also check that the accommodation provider has the relevant credentials (like being registered with ABTA) to ensure that they’re legitimate.
This generally tends to take place in taxis, especially at night and often driving from airports to hotels. When it comes to paying, you hand over a note – say a $20 – and the driver takes it from you, before turning around with a smaller note, implying it was the one you originally gave them and that you’d only, in fact, handed over $5. It’s likely that the cabbie simply switched the notes and is preying on jet lagged tourists who are too tired to be sure of what they handed over. You then end up coughing up even more cash to your scammer.
How to beat the scammers: Make sure to say out loud how much you are handing to your taxi driver as you pass it over. If need be, ensure that both you and your driver have seen the note clearly so that there is no confusion.
Visitors to popular tourist attractions like the pyramids can enjoy taking camel rides for the perfect Egyptian experience and ideal photo opportunity. To get up on these impressive beasts, their owners will happily encourage the camel to lie down, but when it comes to getting off the animal again, they won’t let them lie down until you’ve paid over a much higher sum than may have originally been agreed.
How to beat the scammers: Book your camel rides as part of an organised tour to avoid being caught out high and dry.
Your parents may have taught you never to accept gifts from strangers, and that still stands when you’re exploring a tourist destination. Examples of this scam include charming locals placing friendship bracelets on your wrist or souvenir gifts in your hand without your permission and then refusing to leave you alone until you have given them money. If a tourist refuses to pay up, they may get angry or bothersome, causing distress until the weary traveller simply hands over their cash.
How to beat the scammers: Be vigilant with strangers bearing gifts and don’t take anything from them. If they do manage to give you a bracelet or unwanted souvenir, simply ask them to remove it or take the item back before you call the police.
Another popular taxi driver scam is simple but extremely frustrating for visitors, particularly when just arriving at the airport. The driver will wait until you hand over cash to pay and will simply inform you that they don’t have any change to give you back. It’s fairly likely that if they’re taking you from the airport, you will only have larger notes available and they will be able to pocket the difference.
How to beat the scammers: If this happens to you then stand your ground – ask them to change the note in a nearby shop, cafe or even in your hotel.
A trick that has been witnessed all over the world, involves a local scammer discovering a ‘gold’ ring or valuable on the floor and sharing their excitement with a nearby tourist. They then offer to sell the ring to the tourist in the hope that the visitor will hope to make money by selling it on elsewhere. Of course the ring turns out to be worthless and the tourist ends up out of pocket.
How to beat the scammers: Here they are just appealing to greed, hoping that you will be looking to make yourself some extra cash. Just walk away and don’t let them convince you otherwise.
Bogus flight tickets account for around one fifth of travel scams1, with flights to West Africa said to be a particular target. Fraudsters often claim to sell tickets on behalf of well-known airlines, but are in fact completely unauthorised. These scammers have been known to target travellers by advertising on social networks like Facebook and then use the consumer’s details to pocket money and even commit identity fraud.
How to beat the scammers: If a cheap fare looks too good to be true, it’s likely that it probably is, particularly when advertised through an unknown third party. Never send money or give your bank details online – if possible always pay on credit card so that you can claim back lost money if necessary.
To find out more about travel scams and what to do if you’ve been a victim, check out this guide to avoiding scams when booking a holiday.
Published by Stephanie Sheehan, a travel expert (and city break fanatic!) at Propellernet.
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