There are lots of things that bug me about travel, here are a few:
Chain restaurants, poorly managed queues, getting sick, taxi drivers that say that they take credit cards and then insist upon being paid in cash and jet lag.

Of course there are so many things that I love about travel that make these minor inconveniences, it does feel good to rant every now and then though.

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My rant is at airlines and booking flights:
1) Why should we have to pay in full for a flight booked months in advance of travel? We should be able to pay a deposit and a final balance 10 weeks (or so) prior to departure. It’s a big outlay and especially if you are booking for your family and not as a single traveller.
2) Why do families have to pay for each passenger and extra amount for group seating?
Adults should be able to sit with their children for safety reason without having to pay extra to book seats together, or rush to be at the front of the check-in desk to give them a better chance.

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How Many Rants do you want Darren!
My Biggest Bug Bear is Tour Operators and their Pricing Structures for Independent Travel Agencies and Larger Consortiums and Agents who work on Volume and not Profit, who discount to rediculous levels just to get the booking. No Wonder the Consumer is confused,because they have no idea what the realistic price of a holiday should cost anymore.For Instance.
We have a Wedding enquiry to Jamaica for 22 adults and two children with Thomas Cook the Tour operator. Because the Party is split between Manchester and Gatwick and some are for 7 nights, some for 14 Nights, We cannot call this a group booking, or have 1 Person at Thomas Cook to act as a Co-ordintaor. We have to book each Party seperatly on our Viewdata Systems ( Viewdata is every Travel Agents booking system for Tour Operators that we cannot book on-line.)
One of the Party is 4 Adults travelling from Gatwick on 19th October, Viewdata prices from Thomas Cook comes out at £3801.00. But exactly the same on Thomas Cooks Web pages comes to £3588 which includes a massive Discount of £788. Thomas Cook are one of the Operators who will let us take a Viewdata Print-out and a Web Print out, and providing it is an exact like for like booking will honour the Web Price, but at a vastly reduced commission Level. We Would then have to book the Viewdata prices, go to Cooks with all of the Extra admin this Creates and then probably have to keep fighting as incorrect invoices would probably land on our doorstep and for less than half of our normal earnings.
Then We find out that the Client has another Quote and wants us to better it, yes you’ve guessed it, a Group Manager from Thomas Cook’s Homeworking Division has offered a discount of approx £80.00 per adult and £30.00 per Child and the client expects us to go one better. If We Did this, we would not earn a penny and would probably be about -£20.00 on each adult.
It’s Time that Tour Operators offered one Price for all, so everybody understands the true value of the holiday being booked, and that Quality and Service ,not down to Value should be every ones wish and help more Companies survive.

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What really annoys me about travel is why everything is so well maintained in other countries other than Uk. When i come home to the UK its just not the same its really annoying the queues are kak the foods not good people are morbid you can’t talk to other people in a bar like you could abroad. The transport sucks aswell.

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The new anti terror law in the UK which means taking a photograph in a public place can get you arrested is really marking me up the wrong way. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/12/photographers-anti-terror-laws

So basically if you are at a public place and take a photo you can be arrested at a police officers whim. No more snaps of Big Ben, houses of parliament or Buckingham palace, or even Edinburgh castle at new years. At least if there’s a bobby around. Which there will be of course.

The photojournalists are picking up on it, but it effects tourism too. Very, Very, Wrong.

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Lee,

Go one better a customer going back and forth between a Thomson shop, a first choice shop and Thomson call center (all the same company) and getting the price lowered in total by 24%…. So the staff from the same company each offering more off than the staff member before so they can get a booking that the company already has…losing over £1000 on a booking they would of got anyway………good for the customer I suppose but if repeated and repeated the company would lose so much money.

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