Is Your Supplier Reliable? 11 Ways to Cut Your Risk

Check the Numbers

The U.S. government compiles and publishes some useful data that assess airline and cruise-line reliability:

• The Department of Transportation (DOT) publishes an Air Travel Consumer Report with monthly and yearly data that measure airline operational reliability in terms of delays, mishandled baggage, oversales, consumer complaints, and problems with transportation of pets.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) posts a Green Sheet Report of scores from its regular inspections of cruise-ship sanitation, one important measure of reliability.

Unfortunately, no other government data sources cover hotels, rental cars, or tour operators.

Check What Users Say

Several big online outfits collect and compile reliability data based on user reports. The largest sites include:

• TripAdvisor (SmarterTravel.com's sister site) for hotels, airlines, and vacation rentals.
• Skytrax for airlines worldwide.
• Cruise Critic for cruises.

A lot of other websites post user-generated reviews of hotels, airlines, cruise lines, and car-rental companies. User reviews occasionally come under fire for lack of uniform standards as well as for false submissions by suppliers or their competitors. Overall, though, they're extremely useful, particularly when they highlight problems.

Check the Big Online Agencies

Most of the big online travel agencies, such as Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity, provide a rating compiled from user reports for most of their listed hotels. Some agencies develop their own data, while others use ratings from TripAdvisor or other independent sources. The big online vacation-rental agencies also post user reviews of most rental units.

Check the Professional Raters

J.D. Power and Associates, a top consumer-satisfaction ratings service, posts current customer-satisfaction scores for airlines, North American hotel chains, major online travel agencies, and rental-car companies.

Although nominally focused on restaurants, Zagat recently published a 2012/2013 guide to rental-car companies. As far as I can tell, however, its last airline survey came out in 2010 and has not been updated.

Check with the Travel Pros

Several guidebook and travel-magazine publishers provide their own supplier evaluations, as well as information contributed by users. Among the most comprehensive are books and online content from Fodor's, Frommer's, and Lonely Planet, but you can find dozens of others.

Check the Gripe Sites

If you want to avoid the majority of "wonderful" user reports you get from so many sources, look at a few of the online gripe sites for stories about suppliers that, one way or another, failed the reliability test. Travel Rants and TravelSucks.com concentrate on travel providers. Tourism is also well represented on the many general-interest gripe sites. Also, check with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) about any domestic supplier.

Ask Your Travel Agent

A good travel agent is careful not to book clients with unreliable suppliers, for obvious reasons. That sort of expertise is one of several good reasons for using a professional travel agent, even in the Internet age.

Ask the World

Go online and Google any supplier about which you are at all uneasy. Sure, you'll get a lot of trash search results, but you might also find some useful customer data or financial information on the company you can't find anywhere else.

And to find a reliable local travel agent, ask your friends and coworkers about their experiences. You might also ask your company's travel agency, if it uses one.

Avoid Foreseeable Pitfalls

For the most part, despite occasional glitches and poor service, most travelers would consider well-known airlines, big-name cruise lines, and major hotel chains to be reliable. Your danger spots are smaller overseas airlines on shaky financial ground; maybe some local ferry services; small, independent overseas hotels; and—most likely—small tour operators anywhere.

If you're considering one of these suppliers, be sure to check if it has any business presence in the United States or Canada. That presence won't protect you against a problem, but it at least means that the supplier is within the reach of local court systems in case you have to escalate a complaint that far.

Tour operators that belong to the United States Tour Operators Association (USTOA) must provide $1 million in financial backing to cover reimbursement in case they default.

Minimize Your Purchase Risk

Any time you consider a questionable supplier, careful purchasing can limit your risk.

Avoid advance payments as much as you can. That way, if you encounter a problem, you can back out of the deal, find a substitute supplier, and avoid any financial loss or unpleasant experience.

When you can't avoid paying in advance, you can at least protect your money. Use a credit card rather than cash or debit. And try to delay any advance credit-card payments until 60 days or fewer before the charge; that improves your position if you have to request a chargeback. But a chargeback protects only your payment if your supplier fails to deliver the promised service; it doesn't help with just an unsatisfactory experience.

Insure Your Payments

Carefully consider trip-cancellation insurance (TCI) that includes supplier "default" as a "covered reason" for cancellation. "Bankruptcy" isn't adequate as a reason: Many failing suppliers never bother to file. Like a chargeback, insurance covers only your prepayment and only if a supplier fails totally; it doesn't help with misrepresentation or bad service.

Most travel-insurance companies offer trip-cancellation insurance that compensates you for any advance payments to a supplier that defaults, as well as a bunch of other risks. You can buy it from an insurance agency or from most big online travel agencies, which offer the same kind of cancellation insurance. Either way, costs are typically 5 to 10 percent of the total trip cost.

Home Away's several vacation-rental websites offer an optional Carefree Rental Guarantee of up to $10,000, covering bankruptcy, double bookings, wrongfully withheld security deposits, and property misrepresentation. The cost is $39 for the first $1,000 and $10 per additional $1,000.

Always have a Plan B. No matter how carefully researched in advance, a trip can still go wrong. For that reason, it's a good idea to have some idea of what you might do if you encounter a significant reliability problem with any individual supplier.

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