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Travelers Behaving Badly
Opinion · May 16, 2004

Rob Pait admits he's not always the friendliest traveler. "Yes, I'm sometimes short with travel employees," says the director for a Scotts Valley, Calif., computer hardware manufacturer. "But only with employees who are impolite, unwilling to help or just plain rude themselves."

In years past, the travel industry all but denied people like Pait existed. After all, the customer was always right, and if guests were snippy it was because the hotel clerks, gate agents or customer service representatives weren't doing their jobs.

But as the busy summer travel season heats up, the hotels, airlines and car rental companies seem to be having a change of heart. A series of surveys - one by a hotel chain, and two by travel agencies - reveal there are many more travelers like Pait. Taken individually, the polls are little more than fodder for a weekend trend article. But viewed together, they suggest darker motives by a travel industry intent on commoditizing its own customers.

Credit Holiday Inn with starting it. At the end of the last summer, it held its first "Towel Amnesty Day," which it billed as "a day of absolution for the sticky-fingered masses who have swiped Holiday Inn towels." The hotel chain reports that about 560,000 towels go missing every year. It announced each of its properties would randomly give away 50 of the trademark green-striped towels with the lettering "100% Cotton, 100% Guilt-free, 100% Yours."

To underscore its point, Holiday Inn released a poll that said one in five guests was a towel thief. In other words, 20 percent of Holiday Inn's guests are criminals.

Next came the online agency Travelocity, with its aptly-named "rudeness survey." In early April, it released a follow-up study to a December 2003 poll conducted with Public Agenda, which bluntly concluded that "relying on the kindness of strangers may be a thing of the past, at least when you're on the road."

The Public Agenda survey was damning enough, berating travelers for lashing out at travel employees and making their jobs more stressful. Turns out that was just the start. Among the new Travelocity numbers: Almost one in ten travelers felt it was "unnecessary" to try to even keep their voices down while using a cell phone if it seemed to bother those around them. About one-third reported reclining their airplane seats all the way either "frequently" or "all the time."

Not to be outdone, rival Orbitz released a "hotel habits" survey a few weeks later that accused its customers of "sneaky" vacation behavior. It found that more than half of all adult Americans who have stayed in a hotel for leisure do things in a hotel that they wouldn't at home. Such as? One-quarter confessed to throwing towels on the floor and using more towels than necessary, since they don't have to do the laundry. One in five said they ate in bed and 13 percent left the TV on in the room when they went out.

The survey almost giddily pointed out that young male guests "confuse the housekeeping cart with the shopping cart," with almost one in three admitting to swiping toiletries. Other "souvenirs" include towels (18 percent), ashtrays (14 percent), bathrobes (2 percent) and bathmats (2 percent). So we're not only criminals - we're slobs, too.

What's the motive behind the surveys? Orbitz claims it's trying to pitch its hotel matrix display, which makes it easier to find and compare a hotel room online. Travelocity says its poll is meant to make "life on the road better." And Holiday Inn's stated reason is that it's promoting its brand through its towels. All of which are completely valid explanations, to be sure.

But they're not complete explanations.

What's going on here? Here's one possible answer. For years, the travel industry has complained about the "commoditization" of its products - which, put in layman's terms, means customers draw no distinction between brands. Airline seats are a good example of commoditization: A seat on discount carrier "A" is considered the same as a seat on legacy airline "B," and all things being equal, a traveler will pick the cheaper of the two.

But there's been little if any discussion of the commoditization of the traveler. That's because commoditizing a customer is a backward idea that's bad for business. Slumlords commoditize their tenants, for example, viewing them as little more than rent checks at the end of every month. By reducing their value from a person to that of a revenue-generator, they can justify offering substandard living conditions.

As the busiest travel season in four years gets underway, the travel industry's attitudes about its customers appear to be on the decline. There's evidence that it is devaluing - indeed, dehumanizing - its passengers and guests. And that's bad news for those of us planning to take a trip this summer.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.

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