Five things I hate about booking holidays
By Darren Cronian on Sunday, May 13th, 2007

I love travelling, and I sometimes love researching my own holiday, and occasionally, I’ll get a travel agency to do the searching and booking for me, but they are five things I really hate about booking holidays – not just online.

Five things I hate about booking holidays

Fish bait holiday prices

It’s like a fish hook, they put some bait on to get you in and say you can book this holiday for only £199, and when you’ve gone to the stage where you have added your airport transfer, soggy in-flight meal, travel insurance, and taxes, the price jumps to a whopping £399.

Surely, travel companies should be advertising prices as the actual price, including airport transfer, taxes and meals – when it comes to travel prices, some companies think they can get away with giving consumers bait.

Flight changes

Everyone I have spoken to who has booked a holiday this year, tells me that the airline or travel company has changed their flight times, or even dates. I just hate it when you’ve booked your annual leave, arranged for the neighbour to look after your goldfish, and marked the departure date on your calendar, for the travel company to disrupt your travel plans.

Vanishing email address

It’s an online travel company, but they don’t have their email address or an enquiry form on its site to answer my questions before I book – how impersonal, instead I am directed to a frequently asked question page, which um, doesn’t answer my question.

Deals which don’t exist

You visit a travel site, and on a specific holiday deal – whoohoo £149 to Malta, I click on the link, and you get the usual ‘please wait’ and after a few minutes the site says ‘Sorry, We are unable to find flights for the date, location and duration that you selected.’

Why bother?

Poor Customer care

I hate it – there’s no need for it, but companies for some reason, still have problems communicating with their customers. I’m looking for a holiday in October, so I called a local travel agency, left details of my holiday dates, price range, because they were busy, that was four days ago, and I’m still waiting for someone to call me back.


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6 responses to “Five things I hate about booking holidays”

Nicholas Lee | 14 May, 2007 at 3:28 pm

If you find that an ABTA company has not included fuel surcharge in their prices you can now complain to ABTA.

Remember In-flight meals, transfers are optional so if you do not want them remove them from the costing.

Some companies do have all-inclusive pricing. The reason most people do not see this is because it makes there prices higher and further down the list on searches.

Charles | 18 May, 2007 at 1:20 am

I think customer care has to be improved no end before we see a massive increase in online generated revenue. Good point Nicholas, regarding fuel surcharge, but I wonder if this surcharge could be hidden within the price of the holiday, and not transparent.

Darren Cronian | 18 May, 2007 at 1:30 am

Agreed about customer care.

For an online company not to have their email address or a contact form is poor in my opinion. It’s not very customer friendly to hide behind a website, and this is the reason why alot of people will still want that human touch when booking a holiday.

Booking online is as easy as clicking 1-2-3 | Holiday advice & guides for travel consumers | 20 May, 2007 at 1:49 pm

[...] company has recently booked a holiday online, because it’s certainly not as easy as 1-2-3 from my own experiences. I’ve ranted on enough about what I dislike about booking online, and thought maybe I am missing [...]

Rohan | 20 May, 2007 at 2:35 pm

Nicolas, can you explain more about this fuel surcharge?

Rohan | 25 May, 2007 at 6:23 pm

Anyone?

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