osta Rica Travel News – A lady whom arranged a three-week vacation wound up 1,300 miles removed from her selected holiday destination after travel providers confused her air travel.
Samantha Lazzaris booked the getaway of a lifetime to Costa Rica, in Central America but ended up in the US territory of Puerto Rico instead.
[quote]Many a travel agent will also confuse San José, Costa Rica with San Jose, California. Check your reservation/ticket closely: San José, Costa Rica’s airport code is SJO, while San Jose, California is SJC an San Juan, Puerto Rico, is SJU.[/quote]
The 33-year-old from Bristol, did not realize she was in Puerto Rico right up until she landed on the island in November and hailed a taxi.
She said: “I asked the taxi driver to take me to their hotel I had booked, he looked in amazement, speechless, then laughed and said, ‘This is not Costa Rica. It’s Puerto Rico’.
“I didn’t believe him. I was in shock. I looked around the airport, saw posters of Puerto Rico everywhere, and thought: What am I going to do? Where is Puerto Rico? Where am I?”
Miss Lazzaris had to fork out over 700 dollars on three extra flights – and lost 4 days of her holiday – to make the journey to her designated destination.
It seems that travel agent Thomas Cook utilized the reservation code for San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico, instead of San Jose, capital of Costa Rica when Ms Lazzaris bought the return ticket last November.
The airport codes are similar, with just one letter difference between them -SJO San Jose, Costa Rica – Juan Santamaria International (Airport Code) for San Jose and SJU San Juan, PR, US – Luis Munoz Marin International (Airport Code) for the airport in San Juan.
Miss Lazzaris added: “I am wanting to share my experience with the general public to alert them of the potential appalling treatment they would receive from Thomas Cook. I have never been treated so appallingly in my entire travel life.”
A Thomas Cook spokesman said it would fully investigate the complaint as soon as possible.
No offence to this lady but it is not really that hard to check and ticket and read it correct? Also I am pretty sure the flight attendants when doing their announcements did not say we will be arriving in San Jose, Costa Rica shortly.
I hate when a person uses ignorance as an excuse for stupidity. There are so many times along the way of checking in to actually getting on the plane that they would have mentioned that the flight was not to Costa Rica.
But as is the world today…….bieng dumb is accepted.
Article by Costa Rican Times
Certainly, many people confuse CR with PR and San Jose with San Juan, but this isn’t just about the boarding pass and the flight attendants’ announcements when landing – the destination posted at the boarding gate and the announcements made at the gate advising that the plane was boarding should have clued this poor woman in to the fact that someone screwed up. There also would have been customs/aduana and immigration officials (or a lack thereof if she flew from the US), which would have provided more clues. I guess that this woman was lucky that PR didn’t have a hotel with a name similar to that of her CR hotel – she could have been out the time and money for a lengthy taxi ride.