Three wishes

The other day a colleague asked me an interesting question. If I had three wishes for the travel industry, what would they be?

Hmmm. Just three?

So here are mine. (Send me yours and I’ll post a follow-up!)

#1. Hotels should kill their resort fees (before they end up in court). Those pesky surcharges that are added to your bill, over and above the rate you pay, are nothing if not annoying. And what do they “cover”? Bogus items that should be part of your bill, like beach towels and in-room coffeemakers. Several major hotel chains have backed down on the fees recently, but about 20 percent of hotels still impose these mandatory add-ons. My prediction: Get ready for more lawsuits.

#2. Airlines ought to adopt a Geneva Convention for airline passengers. There are no minimum standards for legroom, how often passengers should be fed, or the amount of fresh air that they receive. And as a result, you get economy class seats with 28 inches of seat pitch. You have transcontinental flights where no meaningful meals are served. You have airlines cutting back on the amount of fresh air that they circulate throughout the cabin, in order to save on fuel. Is it any wonder the major carriers have been cited by the government for failing to meet their most basic customer service obligations?

#3. Car rental companies should stop charging us for damage that we aren’t responsible for. It seems so common-sense. But common sense has gone out the door at a lot of car rental companies. In order to drive up revenues, they are more aggressively pursuing people who damage their vehicles. Even when there’s little or no evidence their customers did it. Some have even been caught billing multiple customers for the same damage. I would not be surprised at all to see several other car rental companies, insurance companies and subrogation management companies implicated in this kind of scheme soon.

So you see, three very modest wishes. But a guy can dream, can’t he?

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

1 comment