Costa 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.
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 thie 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 differnce between them -SJO San Jose, Costa Rica – Juan Santamaria International (Airport Code) for San Jose and SJU San Juan, PR, USA – 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 thec omplaint 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 attendents 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 alons 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…….being dumb is accepted.
