I’m baffled by Expedia’s latest marketing campaign, a tie-in to the upcoming film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The other day, my friends over at the online travel agency sent me a fedora in a box along with a note that promised I could “Travel like Indiana Jones, starting today.”
Now why would anyone want to do that?
Let’s be clear. The specials are pretty interesting, which is more or less how other bloggers have reacted to the initiative. (Sorry, but I refuse to post a picture of my kids wearing the hat.)
Travelers visit the locations that either appeared in (or were inspired by) the Indy movies. Horseback riding and camping with the Bedoins in Petra, Jordan (like in “The Last Crusade”); Elephant safari in India (like in “Temple of Doom”); visiting Incan ruins in Peru (like in the new movie, “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”) – you get the idea. They’re also designed specifically to visit UNESCO World Heritage sites. They’re pretty awesome.
As a die-hard fan of the Indy movies, I wondered whether the folks at Expedia really thought this one through.
Travel like Indiana Jones? Let’s ponder that for a moment.
- In “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Indiana Jones is chased by tribal warriors shooting poison darts, swims through piranha-infested waters, shares an airline seat with a snake, gets beaten up in a bar, survives multiple assassination attempts on the streets of Cairo, is imprisoned by Nazis, entombed in an archaeological dig and tied up in a cave while the bad guys are fried by the wrath of God.
- In “Temple of Doom,” Indiana Jones is poisoned, shot at by Chinese gangsters, jumps from an airplane without a parachute, plunges off a waterfall and survives multiple assassination attempts. The bad guys try to throw him off a cliff and, in one memorable scene, nearly rip his heart out.
- In “The Last Crusade,” our hero is thrown into a train filled with dangerous zoo animals, including snakes, lions and a foul-tempered rhino. He survives multiple assassination attempts, the most memorable of which is a high-speed chase by machine-gun wielding villains on motorboats through the canals of Venice. He’s tortured by Nazis, and one of them tries to run over him with a tank.
If you want to travel like that, maybe you need help.
In some ways, I think Expedia has unwittingly illuminated a truth about travel in the 21st century. With customer service at perhaps an all-time low, aren’t we all traveling like Indiana Jones today?
Don’t we all feel at times like we’ve been thrown off a cliff — or under a tank?
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.
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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