I met a great guy last week, Stuart Gonzales. We were chatting, as you do with new friends, about our interests. I started
describing Mia Bazo, and when I got to the Document and Vaccination Vault, he told me a story.
“It was embarkation day for a transatlantic cruise from Barcelona, Spain to Port Canaveral in Florida, stopping for a
day in Malaga and a day in the Bahamas. There were a lot of seniors in the queue, and from what I overheard, for many it
was the holiday of a lifetime.
“It should have been one of their happiest days ever. Instead, I noticed that lots of them were getting upset and frustrated.”
It turns out that everyone was being delayed by the documents they had to submit before boarding.
They all had the documents that had been needed to enter Spain, such as the Passenger Locator Form (new since the pandemic),
mixed up with the documentation they needed to board the ship: Boarding pass, proof of Covid vaccination, proof of the
negative Covid test they took when they’d arrived at the port. If they weren’t US citizens, their visa or proof of an
ESTA waiver...
“Dear, where did you put that...?”
“No ma’am, that’s not the correct form...”
“Oh, darn, it’s in here somewhere...”
Understandably, many of the seniors were getting flustered. Some froze like a deer in the headlights. One poor woman dropped
her folder of documents, spewing papers all over the floor.
Stuart, being Stuart, ended up helping about 20 couples get their paperwork sorted out so they could board.
“Most people have smartphones,” said Stuart. “If they’d had the Document and Vaccination Vault, they could have taken a picture of anything they might
remotely need on their journey. Then it would all have been in one place when they arrived to board.
“I wish I’d had it, because even though I knew which documents I needed, I wouldn’t have had to lug around that fat folder.”
Since that’s about the best endorsement for the Vault I can imagine, I won’t add any commentary.
Travel happy, everyone.
John Scott is founder and CEO of Mia Bazo and our sister company Voyage Manager, with 24 years in software design and development. He is a digital nomad and committed environmentalist.