Don’t get me wrong, I find airline service cuts as maddening as anyone. And I can whine with the best of them when things go wrong during travel. But it does seem like in many cases of cranky travelers, the problem increasingly may be unrealistic expectations.
A client this week was unsure which flight she wanted to take home from Europe. So what she wanted was reservations on two separate nearly full flights, the same day, the same airline, business class. When her assistant and I explained this was not possible, she responded that we should simply issue and pay for two tickets, and then refund the unused one.
Unfortunately, beside the issue of potentially costing the airline a real sale, reservations computers now catch duplicates, and automatically cancel one, or both bookings. Plus with tight TSA regulations, and airline rules against name changes, booking under a phony name was not an option.
We eventually convinced the client in question to choose, although she was not happy about it.
But I’ve seen this entitlement attitude in other areas.
Take seat assignments for example. When a family books a vacation six months in advance, it seems reasonable to expect to be able to be seated together. But when a business traveler books three days before a flight, and then is unhappy that the exit row isn’t available, that’s another matter.
Ditto last minute upgrades. Considering that passengers can request upgrades and free tickets up to 331 days in advance, it’s not so surprising that even in a recession, first class might be full on a given flight. But some travelers are incensed by this news.
Another issue has to do with flight changes. When clients make a small mistake on a ticket, discover it nearly immediately, and the airline refuses to waive the fee, I sympathize with them. When a client books a cross country ticket, and within a few days of departure wants to change the date, or even the city-pairs, well, that’s a different story.
Yet some travelers will be furious at the thought that their perceived “small” change could cost so much. “I just want to leave a day earlier.” Or “I just want to come back from Boston instead of New York.” Despite all previous warnings to the contrary, they believe ALL changes should be a flat $150, at most. Instead of the standard industry rule of $150 or more, plus the fare difference.
It doesn’t stop at the airport. At San Francisco last week, a man was trying to insist to a United employee that he should go to the very front of the United priority security line for elite, first and business class fliers, because he had paid $50 for “Priority Boarding.” The agent in turn pointed out he WAS in the priority line, which was shorter than the regular line. He finally grumpily took his place.
These issues don’t just apply to airline travel. I watched a man berate a check-in clerk at a deluxe Hawaii hotel earlier this year, because the hotel wouldn’t upgrade him and his wife to an ocean view room. The couple. however, had paid for a room with no view. The clerk was doing his best to explain that they had they had been actually upgraded to a better room, with a nice garden view.
The man’s feeling was clearly – if the hotel had ocean view rooms open, he should have one. Now, besides the issue of wanting to spread the rooms out amongst the housekeeping staff, hotels have to have some pricing structure to keep in business. (Not to mention, no one wants to reward a jerk.)
Now actually, a majority of Americans do behave when they travel, and have realistic expectations. In fact, sometimes I marvel there are not more airport riots. But stories like the above are increasingly common in our agency, and I hear about more and more similar incidents from other agents and travel industry workers.
If the number of “entitled” travelers is increasing, maybe it’s because travel is becoming increasingly stressful. Or maybe all the additional fees are raising expectations. Or maybe it’s just because a generation of children who grew up getting trophies for everything feels they should “win” at everything. What do you think?
Photo: United new business class seats photo by Mab on flckr/creative commons
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
