My main hate is AIRPORTS! We are like cattle waiting (and waiting and waiting) with nothing to occupy us but overpriced plastic food (mostly), generic duty free shops, people hogging 3 seats so they can enjoy a snooze to while away the wait whilst others search for a place to sit, queues at loos, dirty loos, stupid see through bins full of amnesty nail scissors, and don’t get me started on airport car parks ~ well, I started myself: too far to walk, excessive charges, and then to try to find where you left the flipping car upon return, drunk hen/stag party groups who think they are absolutely hilarious and want us all to know it, rude staff in duty free perfume shops totally afronted that you might like to browse rather than buy, IDIOTS who only chose to search for their tickets/passports/whatever just at the minute they finally reach the check in desk, people who queue jump!!!, people with bright red ’suntans’ on the homeward bound wait, people blasting off to all in earshot about their destination and how wonderful it is/same people on way home blasting off about how shit their destination was, full bins, krypton factor cafes: ok got food, now find drinks area, now find cutlery & napkins, now find sauces/s&p, still balancing (greasy) tray and shuffle to check out where if you’ve forgotten something you have to pay and start the whole shuffle again (if you have an iota of will left that is), over priced bars, rip off taxis outside.

And you call yourself TRAVEL RANTS

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#1 – Interesting point. But maybe it’s because a) travel sites have realised to a large extent what works for their users and b) we’ve plateaued a bit because we’ve come to the limits (for now) of the technology at our disposal. Maybe…

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“Well, I have noticed that more hotels here have kept with charging per person, rather than per room. This means if you are a solo traveller you have to pay for two people.”

How does this differ from hotels that charge per room? Still works out double for a solo traveller!

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Damian, you’ve been out-ranted by Catherine, who gives good reasons for avoiding air travel where possible, although many of her observations *could* be tackled by airports and airlines. I spent 30 years flying, mostly long-haul, and as I wasn’t personally paying it was mostly at the front end of the plane. I’m glad I saw the best days of air travel (still have a stack of old inflight menus from the early 70s through to the mid-80s to remind me how good inflight catering once was). Now I do the occassional trip to Marbella and Split by air and just one long-haul a year to Brisbane — and hate every moment of the air travel. In Europe, I travel frequently to places like Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris — from a base in Belgium, and use the train, which is far more comfortable

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@Darren,
I totally agree, especially on the 3 first points. USA are already providing contracts with unlimited phone calls all over the world and google voice saves you a lot of money. Europeans… we are still getting screwed and the european union even has to make official rules in order to avoid those unbearable roaming fees.

@Ben,
If I may say, Darren has a point there. If you read the last Forrester study, you would see that the travel industry is years behind what’s being done on Internet. The travel industry was the first e-commerce industry but since then, there are really few players left (apart few independents), increasing their margin instead of innovating.
Travelintelligence for example Of course you have the addthis plug-in, a collaborative feedback tool, a flickr – facebook – twitter, etc… account and consequently in advance compared to other travel websites. But apart this, if you look at other industries, even the banking industry is more innovative on Internet.

Internet users check, on an average, 11 websites before booking a hotel room…
I won’t go into details but yes (and I would love to see somebody tell me the contrary) the travel industry is OUT OF DATE regarding UI and innovation standards. Data portability, open-ID and Oauth, RIA…. no travel website has any of this and we are just speaking about basics, not latest innovations.

I would add a point: Please let us share and own our info and profile!!

Regards,
Antoine Grillon

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Darren

I am wondering what will make you go wow with travel start-up’s? I have not seen anything for years.

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Darren, how can you get angry about number 1? Disappointed or frustrated maybe, but angry? How can you get angry about something that hasn’t happened?

Do you put the kettle on and get angry because nobody has invented a kettle that takes two seconds to boil rather than thirty? Or is it just travel that angers you with the not-so-linear nature of innovation?

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@ Darren. Can you really compare the two? You may well be right and innovation might be a bit slow at the moment, but I’m never easy when people say “travel lags behind other industries” because you can’t really compare it to any other industry. I’m sure there will be some great mobile travel apps coming through, but I just don’t know if it’s something to get angry about.

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Interesting that you’ve seen so many fake websites–they don’t seem to be much of a problem here in the States.

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[...] After reading Darren Cronian’s recent blog post, “Five things that annoy me about travel” outlining 5 of his top issues with the current state of the travel industry from a consumer [...]

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Zach, that is because the States does not work like the EU in protecting consumers or the way you purchase travel.

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Thanks for the Joobili link Darren. Interesting looking website.

My biggest gripe in travel is still the airport travel experience but I think Catherine in comment number one has covered that !

I also think the new longhaul flight tax is going to be a killer for some destinations that really rely on tourism for their economic stability and growth,

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Hi there,
Great holiday hates. I usually read about what is the greats 5 things about going on holiday but your post is unique

My main hate, especially here from London is getting to the airport (The airport itself is a different story). I live in east London and in many cases I have to get to Heathrow Airport for certain holiday destinations. Getting the train to central london then tube to the Airport is around 2 hours or more trip. Then you wait in the airport for 3 hours minimum with all the new security check systems. Your flight has to be delayed in Heathrow now a days, so add half an hour to the total. The plane usually takes 4 hours, then from the airport to your hotel could be 1 hour. The total is almost 10 hours to travel!

Thanks for letting us get it off our chest

Best,
Issa

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I have to agree with your second point. We’ve just booked a holiday and none of the sites allowed you to search for flights and a week each in different cities. We ended up calling their premium rate call centre to see if they could do it, but no they ended up booking it as two separate bookings! It’s not an usual request, you’d think someone would have cracked it by now!

My biggest gripe on hotels is that, apart form a few notable ones, they don’t offer the ability to search for more than one room at a time. I do a lot of bookings for work and as I need to book two adults in two rooms I often end up going through the whole booking process twice.

And don’t get me started on the rip off prices for train travel. Looking into booking tickets from the north to Heathrow. Travelling there and back on a saturday and obviously can’t book a set train for the return as you are guaranteed to be delayed. Worked out that the whole thing (intercity, tube, heathrow express) will cost us nearly the same as a week’s accommodation!

(oh and I have no idea whether the holiday we’ve booked is protected by any body, that can of worms just makes my head hurt)

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The innovation question’s an interesting one. Antoine is right about “Data portability, open-ID and Oauth, RIA” and so on; but I agree with Simon’s reservations about comparing travel with mobile technology. There’s a tendency to see the pace of change in consumer electronics as the norm, but most sectors don’t have a Moore’s Law, or an equivalent to the ‘free upgrade’ model, where networks basically guarantee a market for new phones by dropping the latest technology in users’ laps to keep them on contract. We’ve come to see a shiny new handset every 12-18 months as the norm, but it’s insane.

In terms of mobile *software* for the sector, Layar is pretty smart. In fairness the next step for travel inspiration/content is probably widespread location awareness, and mobiles will have a big part to play there.

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