For most of us in Europe, summer is all about holidays and travel – which may or may not work out the way you want it to. The latter is unfortunate, especially if the holiday was to be the highlight of the year for the traveller. My favourite ‘holiday gone wrong’ story is from the late nineties. Our friends went on a honeymoon to Dominkas, paid for the trip with a Hungarian travel agency, which brokered the trip for an Austrian agency. They received the information in Hungarian, which said that no visa was required. They flew out, spent a week in a beautiful hotel (so far so good), then at the end of the week they were taken by bus to a port hundreds of kilometres away, from where they would continue their journey on a cruise ship. They boarded, got their cabin and a form asking for a visa number. They indicated to the crew that they did not have a visa. Well, that’s when they were picked up and taken off the ship with all their luggage. With a week left of their holiday, they sat in the port with their suitcases. Santa Lucia was English, Guadelupe was French and the ship was flying the American flag – they couldn’t even stay on the ship without a visa. They managed to change their flight to an earlier date and made their way home, disappointed as hell. The agency in Uatzas offered to pay the price of a week’s cruise as compensation. Not satisfied with this, they sued the agency. After seven years of litigation, they won, with the travel agency paying more than double the total cost of the trip. A botched honeymoon, millions in damages for the agency. Just saying, it might have been less painful if they had gone about settling the dispute in a different way. A flexible approach, an openness to alternative dispute resolution saves a lot of money and time, not to mention the fact that the passenger, if he feels that his case has been fairly settled, remains a customer in the future, not an angry victim. So, travel agents and passengers, if you’ve messed up your holiday, think smart, initiate an alternative dispute resolution.