Every trip we take generates two lists: the things we packed and used, and the things we learned when something went sideways. This post is the second list — the habits we now treat as rules, each one bought with an afternoon we didn’t enjoy.
Never arrive after dark, first time
Every unknown building is worse at night. The accessible entrance is round the side, unlit. The dropped kerb is somewhere. The key safe is at the wrong height. We book travel so we arrive anywhere new in daylight, even when it means leaving earlier than feels necessary. Second visits can be any time; first visits are daytime.
Confirm everything 48 hours out
One round of phone calls two days before: the room, the assistance booking, the taxi, the parking. It takes twenty minutes and it catches something — a rebooked room, a lapsed taxi booking, an assistance reference that never made it into the system — more often than you would believe. The person who confirms is never the person who is stranded.
The first hour rule
On arrival anywhere we are staying, before unpacking, before the kettle: check the bathroom actually works for us, check the bed height, find the accessible fire exit, and test that the promised things are true. If the room is wrong, the time to say so is in the first hour, while reception can still do something and before you have colonised the wardrobe. Rooms get fixed for the people who ask early and pleasantly.
Photograph the promises
The booking page that said wet room. The email that confirmed the ramp. The chair at the departure gate. The parking bay you were told to use. None of it takes a minute, all of it settles arguments later, and the discipline of it has quietly won us refunds, upgrades and apologies without a single raised voice.
Build one empty day into every week away
Not a rest day — an empty one, with nothing booked and nothing owed. Travelling this way costs more energy than the able-bodied version of the same itinerary, and the difference compounds. The empty day is where the trip breathes. Sometimes it becomes the best day; sometimes it is naps and a crossword; both are the holiday working as designed.
And the one that took us longest to learn
Leave. If a place has got it badly wrong and is not fixing it, stop negotiating, get the evidence, and go somewhere better. We spent years grinding out bad stays because leaving felt like a defeat. It isn’t. The money usually comes back; the days never do. Somewhere in every town is a place that will be glad you came — the whole point of this site is to help you find it first time.
Your turn: if you have experiences of your own — the places that got it right, and the ones that got it badly wrong — tell us in the comments below. Every report helps the next traveller.