Early Tour Invoicing and Confirmation
Early Tour Invoicing and Confirmation (ETIC)
WINGS will on occasion offer ETIC especially for tours that are full or nearly so and which for one reason or another have complicated flight arrangements.
This process will work in general terms, as follows.
1. WINGS will announce its intent to offer ETIC for a given tour to all current tour registrants.
2. Current registrants will be asked to signal their willingness to participate. If the number of current registrants signaling such willingness reaches or exceeds WINGS’ threshold for offering ETIC, we will invoice the tour.
3. Once we receive sufficient payments, the tour will be formally confirmed and payments will become non-refundable.
The Details:
A. No one is obligated to participate. Registrants who decline for whatever reason will be invoiced at the normal time, about 98 days before departure. There is no explicit cost for declining but registrants billed at the normal time may face higher tour costs than those who were invoiced early if the costs of flights or other tour services have increased unexpectedly in the interim.
B. The “threshold” referred to above is the minimum number of people needed to run the tour at the published price. If the threshold is not reached, we’ll notify everyone promptly that ETIC has failed and that the tour will be invoiced in the normal fashion.
C. If the “threshold” referred to above is met, we will promptly send invoices for the tour with invoice payment due on receipt. Once all payments have been received, we will formally confirm the trip and those participating in the ETIC can book their flight and make other plans confident that the tour will operate.
C1. Payments for early invoicing should be made by personal check. This will qualify registrants for the normal cash discount (currently 4%) but will also allow us to return or destroy the checks (with minimal inconvenience to all) if the ETIC has to be cancelled because clients who initially agreed have had to withdraw.
C2. The time from the initial announcement to formal trip confirmation should be between three and four weeks. Much of that time is needed for personal checks to clear the banking system.
C3. Once the tour is confirmed, all payments are non-refundable unless the tour is cancelled (for safety reasons).
ETIC’s Main Benfits
1. Confirming a tour early will allow our clients to make their travel arrangements much sooner than would otherwise be possible, not only for the tour but for any travel they may have planned surrounding the tour. Air tickets purchased early are typically less expensive, sometimes significantly so, and frequent flier tickets are more likely to be available.
2. ETIC will of course qualify everyone for the normal cash discount.