National Travel and Tourism Week is May 3-9 this year, and as you might imagine, this year feels a little different. While we're still celebrating love of travel and the #SpiritOfTravel, most of us are, in fact, not traveling at the moment thanks to COVID-19. 
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We miss our clients and we miss traveling. This pandemic has hit the travel industry and everyone who works in it in painfully hard ways, and it’s been hard to put our feelings and our experience as an agency into words when we know so many other industries and businesses have been impacted as well. 

But we can’t offer curbside delivery. 
We can't offer "trips to go", though the thought is funny to think about, in a wry, ironic sort of way.
We can’t sell products online, because what we sell isn't really a product.
We sell experiences.  

We get people going.
We get people moving.
We help people discover all of the wonderful places and history and food and stories this amazing world offers. 

So when the world goes still, so does travel. 

But we will come back, and our tours will resume and our personal trip planning for families and individuals will start up once again. And when that time comes, we hope you’ll consider supporting us the way you (and we) have supported other small businesses during this time. 

Don’t book that flight online - let us do it for you.

Instead of that Air BnB (which doesn’t work with travel agencies), let us find a great beach house or condo for you. 

Let us plan your first family road trip back out, and book your hotels. 

Let us do the booking for your next Disney or Universal trip. 
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Get together with your friends and sign up for one of our group tours and leave all of the planning to us. 

No, you won’t always get “a deal” when you use a travel agency. You won’t always get cheaper. But cheaper isn’t always better when it comes to travel. “You get what you pay for” can sometimes ring really true, and you won’t get “cheap” with us because we don’t sell cheap trips. We won’t book you in substandard hotels or put you with subpar tour operators. Remember, we sell experiences and we want your experience to be amazing. 

So… you won’t get “cheap” with us. What you will get is amazing value. And you will get excellent service. You will get people who love travel and love helping people travel and have the resources and experience to help you plan an amazing trip. You will get people who remember you, who know you by name, who learn what you like and what you don’t like, and who will go above and beyond when something doesn’t go right and a flight gets delayed or a hotel gives you problems or a cruise gets canceled. 

We are the ones who will be on the phone at 10pm on a Saturday when your international flight gets canceled and you just want to get home. 

We are the ones on the phone navigating all of the rescheduling with airlines and hotels and tour operators when your first flight gets delayed and threatens to completely mess up your entire vacation.

We are the ones who will get up at 6am to book those Disney fast passes for you while you get your child ready for their first day of school. 

We are the ones ready to answer all of your questions no matter how many you have, and if we don’t know the answer, we will find out.

We aren’t just in the travel business. We’re in the people business. And we’re looking forward to being with our people again very soon.

Happy National Travel Week! Let's plan a trip!

#ShopLocal
#SupportSmallBusiness
#UseATravelAdvisor
#UseZacharyTravel   

April 1, 2020

Dear Friends,

I hope this finds you staying safe and healthy and at home. I wanted to send you an update on our tours for 2020. 

As we have monitored world events and government updates related to COVID-19, we’ve also been in ongoing communication with our travel suppliers and industry experts. We have made the difficult decision to cancel all tours scheduled through the end of May, as well as the majority of our domestic tours by air and all of our international tours by air through the end of this year. 

This decision includes the following: Big Bend, Pioneer Woman/Oklahoma, Grand Canyon, Holy Land Summer, South Africa, Russia, San Francisco, Alaska Land, Albuquerque/Balloon Fest, Italy, Nile River/Egypt, and Australia/New Zealand.  

Refunds will take longer to process than usual. This is because we must wait to receive refunds from our suppliers. Unfortunately, due to the shutdowns around the country as well as the volume of cancellations that everyone in our industry is dealing with, we have to expect a longer delay than what is the norm. Please know your money is safe and our staff is working hard to process your refunds as we are able. 

Some of our clients have asked us to transfer their deposits/payments to another tour or to hold their payments to apply to another tour later and this option is available for those who want it. We can do this on a request basis, but you must contact us and let us know you’d like to do this. Otherwise, we will issue you a refund. We do hope to release our 2021 tour schedule in June. 

Please contact our office by phone (225.654.9210) or by email ([email protected]) with any questions or concerns. Our staffing is extremely limited at this time (currently 9am-12noon Monday-Friday), as we follow the state and federal stay-at-home guidelines, but we are checking voicemail and will respond as soon as possible. You can also check our website at zacharytravel.com for updates. 

Sincerely,

Wayne Barnes

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Due to the current stay-at-home order for the state of Louisiana, our office hours are from 9am-noon, Monday through Friday, with limited staffing as we are rotating staff who will take turns working in the office and working from home. We are not accepting walk-ins or in-person visits at this time. Please call us at 225.654.9210 or email us at [email protected] for assistance. 

Spring is here and what better way to celebrate warmer weather and the beginning of Daylight Savings Time than by planning a trip! 

In addition to all of our individual trips we help our clients plan, we offer more than 40 group tours each year led by experienced guides from our office. Already in 2020, our travelers have seen Yellowstone in Winter and the Northern Lights in Iceland and we're about to say "Aloha" to more than 35 who will be enjoying a cruise around the Hawaiian islands and another 20 who will visit Israel. 

Here's a quick update of where we are with our current tours and a few highlights of new trips you may want to consider if you're looking for somewhere to go soon. Want to see more on our group tours? Visit our Group Tours Page for details and links to all of our trips coming up this year. 

TRIPS IN 2021 WITH IMPORTANT DEADLINES HAPPENING SOON: 

1. The 150th British Open (also known just as The Open) at St. Andrews, Scotland is a world-renowned event that golfers everywhere dream about attending. We are currently holding very limited space for this exceptional golfing experience which includes 4 golfing opportunities on world famous Irish courses and 2 sessions at this historical Open. But your deposit of $1,500 must be received no later than March 25. Contact our office with questions. 
2. Tulips on the Rhine happens in April of 2021 but if you book by March 31, you get free air.  This is a wonderful cruise, sailing down the Romantic Rhine, Europe's longest river during tulip time. 

NEW TRIPS TO KNOW ABOUT AND TRIPS WITH DATE CHANGES: 

1. If you're a fan of Food Network Star Ree Drummond, also known as the Pioneer Woman, you may be excited to learn that we are planning on visiting her stomping grounds in Oklahoma this coming May. This 4-day motor coach tour is perfect for the ultimate Pioneer Woman fan, so grab your friends or your spouse or just yourself and join us for this tour that includes the Mercantile where you'll be able to enjoy a special dinner featuring one of Ree's recipes, a tour of the Drummond Lodge where the show is filmed when in production, and a few other fun stops along the way. 
2. Our Best of Arkansas tour in June is also new this year, and like the Pioneer Woman tour, is a shorter motor coach trip that features 3 historical lodges & hotels in a beautiful area of the country that's often overlooked. We've had a great amount of interest for this trip and while we are currently taking a wait-list, we are hoping to open space for another bus should we have enough people indicate they want to go. A decision will be made by the end of March so contact our office if you'd like to sign up. 
3. Our Nashville Christmas tour has had a date change. Due to supplier and hotel operator changes, we've had to change our dates for the trip to Music City to Dec. 11-14.
4. We just added our World War 2 Day Trip to New Orleans back for Tuesday, April 28. This is always a nice experience with plenty to see throughout the museum. Plenty of space open, so consider joining us for this informative tour. 

TOURS CURRENTLY WAITLISTED: Hawaii Cruise (March), South Africa Safari (June), Canadian Rockies (July), Passion Play (August), New England Fall Foliage 1 (October), Smokies Fall Foliage 1 (October)

TOURS THAT ARE ALMOST FULL: Kentucky/Noah's Ark 2 (April), Yellowstone (July), Canada Fall Foliage (September). Sign up soon if you want to avoid being put on the wait-list. 

Be sure to continue to check our website for the newest updates and news, and as always, you can contact our office by phone or by email. Happy traveling!