A listing will tell you a lodge is "a short walk from the landing." It will not tell you that the short walk is eleven hundred feet of gain on wet root, that the last two hundred yards are boardwalk with no rail, or that in the second week of October the crossing runs on a tide window and the boat leaves whether or not the plane is late. When you book your trip with a travel agent at this office, somebody goes and gets those numbers from the operator, in writing, and hands them to you before you decide anything.
That is the whole reason Driftwood Chronicle Bookings LLC exists. The five steps below are what actually happens between your first message and your departure. Nothing in them involves payment to us. You pay the operating company directly, on the operating company's terms, and no card ever reaches this office at any point in the sequence.
- first messageTell us the month, how many people, and how far in you want to be. One line is enough. If you already know the step you want, name it: at-the-door, ten-minutes, an-hour, half-a-day, no-road. If you do not, describe the day you want to have when you get there and we will tell you which step that lands in. Read the same working day.
- shortlistWe come back with three or four trips out of the twenty, each with its filed step, the operator's price per person, and what that figure covers and does not. No holds are placed, nothing is reserved, and no figure is quoted that the operator has not published or confirmed to us in writing.
- the last mile, in writingThe step nobody else performs. Before you decide, we go back to the operating company and establish, on the record, what the last stretch to the door actually is: the surface underfoot, the height gained and lost, whether there is a carry and who does it, how much of the route is exposed, and what the crossing does in the month you are going rather than in July. If the operator will not put a number in writing, we tell you that, and we tell you what they said instead. This is a description of the ground, not a verdict on it, and not a judgment about you. Two to four working days, because it depends on somebody else answering.
- the figureYou get one written page: the operator's per person price, the deposit and when the balance falls due, what the transfer or crossing costs on top if it is separate, and the operator's own cancellation terms with the dates in them. See what cancellation costs for how those terms differ by step. Nothing on that page is ours to move.
- booking and the fileYou say yes, and we place the reservation with the operating company on your behalf. They invoice you, they take your payment, they confirm to you directly. We keep the written last mile file and the operator's terms, and we send you both. Anything that changes between then and departure, we chase and pass on.
The four things we will tell you we cannot do
- Move a road
- Filed distance is a fact about the ground, not a setting. If a lodge sits four hours in on foot, we cannot arrange for it to sit one hour in, and we will not describe it as closer than it is.
- Hold a price
- The operating company sets the figure and the operating company changes it. We can tell you what it is today and what the operator has said about revising it; we cannot freeze it, and we will not print a figure that has expired.
- Undercut a figure
- We are paid by the operator, not by you, which means there is nothing to discount and no version of the price that we control. Where an operator runs a seasonal rate or a party-of-four rate, we will find it and apply it. That is the extent of it.
- Promise a crossing
- On the no-road step, and often on half-a-day, the boat or the floatplane runs on weather and a timetable. We will tell you the operator's usual pattern for that month and what they do when a departure is scrubbed. We will not tell you it will run.
What this costs you, and who pays instead
Nothing, at any step. There is no consultation fee, no research fee, no fee for the written last mile, and no fee if you read all five steps and decide not to go. If you take the shortlist and book direct yourself, that costs you nothing either, and we would rather you did that than travel on a description you do not trust.
The office is paid by the operating company, as a commission on trips that are actually taken, and it is paid after you travel. That arrangement has two consequences worth stating plainly. The first is that a trip you cancel earns us nothing, so there is no reason for us to talk you into a departure you are unsure of. The second is that we are not an independent price comparison: we are an agency, we place bookings with operating companies, and we are compensated by them. We are not an airline, a lodge, an outfitter, a boat operator, or a tour operator, and we do not run a single one of the trips in the catalog. Every trip is delivered by the company named on your confirmation.
We do not sell or advise on insurance, visas or passports. If a trip raises any of those, we will say so and point you at the operator, who deals with it as part of their own booking process.
Common questions about the sequence are at the questions people actually ask, and the five steps themselves are set out at how a booking is put together.