Most people arrive here with a place in mind and no idea who they are supposed to talk to. This page exists to remove that confusion before you write to us. Amber Almanac is a booking desk. We take a request, we go to the companies that actually run the trips, we bring back a written figure with the operating company named on it, and if you say yes we place the reservation. The operating company bills you directly. We are paid a commission by that company after you come home, which means our fee never appears on your bill and never changes what you pay.
That arrangement has a consequence worth stating before you read the stages below. We hold no card number and no bank details, there is no checkout on this site, and no field anywhere on it will ask you for payment. If a page ever appears to, it is not ours. The money moves between you and the company operating your trip, under that company's own terms, which arrive attached to the written figure so you can read them before you commit to anything.
The stages, in the order they happen
- 1. request lands
- You send the form on any page of this site. It runs 24/7 and there is no window in the week when it stops accepting anything. Tell us the place, the rough dates, how many people and anything that would ruin the trip if we got it wrong. Nothing is owed and nothing is reserved by sending it.
- 2. read by a person
- A person at the desk in Lincoln reads what you sent before that working day ends. If your note is clear enough to price, it goes straight out to the operators. If something essential is missing, dates, headcount, a departure city, you get one short message asking for that one thing rather than a form to fill out again.
- 3. we ask the operators
- We write to the companies that run the trip you are asking about. Usually that is two of them, sometimes three, because a trip with flights and ground arrangements is rarely one company's work. They quote us against your actual dates, not against a shelf price, and their answer is the reason the next stage takes as long as it does.
- 4. the figure comes back
- Within opened by somebody here before that working day is out you get a written figure per person, the name of the company that would operate the trip, what the figure covers, what it does not, and that company's own booking and cancellation terms attached in full. It is a document you can put in front of somebody else and argue with.
- 5. you accept or you do not
- If it works, say so and we place the reservation with the operator. If it does not, say nothing at all and the request lapses. There is no fee for declining, no fee for asking a second time with different dates, and no consequence of any kind. We do not chase, we do not call to follow up, and no message goes to any list.
- 6. during and after
- Once the reservation is placed the operating company invoices you and becomes the party that holds your booking. If something changes, a schedule moves, a room type is withdrawn, we tell you as soon as we know and we relay your instructions back. Changes and refunds run under the operator's terms, which is why we make you read them first. See the terms for changing or cancelling.
Done at this desk
- Goes through what you sent and narrows the list to what your limit leaves standing.
- Takes your dates and your party over to whoever runs each of those.
- Comes back in writing, figure and firm named together.
- Attaches that firm’s conditions whole, because those bind and nothing on this site does.
- Picks up the telephone while you are away and afterwards, not only beforehand.
Done by the operating firm
- Puts the trip on the ground. Not one of the twenty-four is run from here.
- Signs for the beds, the vehicles and the guides in its own name.
- Sends its own bill, on its own timing, under the contract you agreed to.
- Owes you the week, and is who you take it up with.
- Pays a commission over to this desk after you get home.
Ownership of Amber Almanac Bookings LLC lies nowhere in the travel trade: no airline holds a share of it, no chain of hotels appoints it, no shipping or rail company directs it and no booking site is behind it. Nor does it pretend otherwise. Nothing is ever handed across by a traveller.
Six things this desk will not do for you
The first and the most important: we will not tell you which trip is better. The catalogue is one flat list of twenty four trips printed in five different orders, and the orders exist because people mean different things by a good trip. Fewest beds slept in is a real preference. So is fewest hours in the air, or fewest miles on your feet, or the least decided for you before you land, or the smallest starting figure. Pick the order that matches the question you actually have and read down it. We will not rank them for you, we will not mark one as a favorite, and we publish no opinions and grade nothing. If you write and ask which trip is best, the honest answer we send back is a question about what you are optimizing for, and the five orders are at all five orderings.
The other five are shorter. We do not sell or advise on travel insurance, and we do not sell or advise on visas, passports or entry documents: those are not our trade and a wrong answer from us could cost you the trip, so ask the consulate for the country and, on insurance, a licensed broker. We give no medical and no legal advice. We do not hold your money at any stage. We do not operate anything, so we cannot promise a room, a seat, an aircraft or a guide until the company that owns it has confirmed it in writing to us. And we will not price a trip on the telephone, because a figure said out loud is a figure nobody can check later. Call (402) 488-6215 to talk it through by all means, then let the number come to you in writing.
Reserve a trip with the desk in Lincoln
Send the form below and it reaches the desk in Lincoln regardless of the hour. What you get in return, first, is a person reading it before the working day is out, and after that a written figure priced against your dates in opened by somebody here before that working day is out, with the operating company named. If you would rather see the shape of the thing first, the sequence from ask to booked lays the same sequence out in brief, the questions put to this desk answers the questions that come up most, and the form for a written figure goes straight to the request. Written questions go to sightline@amberalmanac.com; if something on this page is wrong, tell us at errata@amberalmanac.com and we will correct it.