A Travel Analyst’s New Year’s Wish List of Travel Improvements

Published January 2, 2020. Imagine you’re me. By day I study and write about travel technology innovations and trends. In my off hours, I like to travel just like everyone else. And yet, when I’m not studying and writing about travel innovations, I feel like I’m a helpless victim of the travel industry. Many consumers don’t realize how fragmented the travel industry actually is – to consumers, it just too often feels like the right hand isn’t talking to the left hand…or the right foot, or the head, or the left leg. While the professional in me knows what the travel industry has in development, the fact that so many of these things are not yet common reality presents no comfort to me or other everyday travelers.

So here’s my little wish list of things I’d love to see done better or realized to help improve my travel experience.

1. Airlines, show me the real price upfront with no hidden details – I don’t understand how the airlines thought that it would be better for passengers when they decided to “unbundle” their fares. I don’t view what they’ve done as better for us; I think it’s a game that’s better for them. Their game wants us to, “Chose this fare because it’s the lowest, but we really won’t reveal what it is to allow you a good comparison until you either spend more time drilling-down into this rate, memorize the verbiage we use to describe our fares compared to our competitors, or head over to checkout at which point we say, ‘Gotcha sucker!’ because had you known at the outset that what you actually wanted isn’t part of this fare, maybe you wouldn’t have purchased it from us to begin with.” What I want to tell the airlines is to stop wasting my precious time like used car salesmen, and just give me the facts upfront. This Basic Economy-type of rate-baiting is like going to the supermarket checkout counter with a pint of blueberries, but when you get there to check-out, you have to leave the container behind and somehow find a way to carry all the blueberries home with you without getting them crushed. In other words, you think you’re buying a good deal, but what you’re really buying is jam.
2. Airlines, be more like Amazon Prime – For $119.00 USD per year, with its Prime membership OPTION, Amazon has figured out the optimal, frictionless customer experience. Free two-day shipping? You got. Free streaming video? You got it. Free streaming music? You got it. Credits towards digital products for deferring on the expedited shipping you’re entitled to? You got it. Take advantage of none of these services? Your loss – you have to accept that you spent $119.00 for nothing. Most major domestic airlines, on the other hand, continue to nickel and dime us for everything from free bags checked to the ability to choose your seat preference. God forbid you want a seat that reclines more than a quarter inch, or power outlets, or a working screen embedded in the seat back in front of you. For a while, a few airlines even stopped giving out snacks and headphones to listen to anything, regardless of the flight duration (thank goodness that trend seems to have reversed itself). Now, I’m even seeing some airlines charging to bring carry-on bags that will go into the overhead bins!  With every charge, my distaste for these major-but-chintzy airlines grows. Whenever it’s possible, I now prefer to fly Southwest Airlines. At least I know what I get with them every single time.
3. Airports, you gotta do better, considering how many miserable hours I have to spend wasting my time within your walls – Airports used to think they were doing us a favor by building “walled malls.” While I appreciate the opportunity to spend my money and time wandering through retail shops while I kill time, I actually have other priorities in mind: get to my gate (or at least figure out how long it will take me from Point A to Point B to get there so I know how much actual time I have to kill), get something to eat, charge my devices, access my email, and go to the bathroom…and not necessarily in that order. Shopping is on the bottom of my totem pole, and even if/when I do have time to shop, I feel like I’m probably doing so resentfully because I either had to be at the airport so damn ahead of my flight as to be stuck there (thanks TSA) or because my flight got delayed or cancelled. The latter is likely not your fault, but you still have to absorb my reaction (just do some searches for “stuck at the airport,” or “a prisoner at the airport” to get a sense of how unhappy passengers are).

The alternatives you offer me are also generally pretty poor: Plant myself in a bar-slash-restaurant for hours or sit at the gate for hours, both of which are typically less than ideal spots for comfort.  Maybe if you airports could get together with the airlines and retailers and figure out how to give us harried travelers some shopping credits, or find a way to provide comfy chairs and gate-side service like we have in at the resort so many of us are trying to reach, we’d be a little more likely to open our wallets? Or, improve the gate areas for better comfort and convenience? Something, anything since too many of us are now forced to spend too many hours on your premises?! For instance, at one tiny regional airport I recently was delayed at, they had a few chairs at the gate that reclined and had outlets right behind them. I could work on my laptop in a comfortable position and charge my phone simultaneously. That helped make my delay experience much improved.

4. Hotels, your check-in process still lags behind the airlines. Dear Hotelier, I think your check-in process is antiquated and stupid. Why do I need to even go up to a desk when all it feels like is some sort of highway police pull-over: “License and credit card, please.” What does waiting in that line do for me, your guest? As I do with self-serve airline check-ins, I would rather either check-in online where you assign me my room and check-in (“boarding”) time at least 24 hours ahead of time, or, I show-up at your destination where I can go to a self-serve kiosk and do all my check-in there (scan my passport and validate it against my booking record and print out a luggage tag if I need luggage assistance). My key could be digitized and sent to my phone via an app or by email…which would mean that you’d have to update your door lock systems to accommodate that. Oh, I get it: new kiosks, new door locks, new technology back-end systems. These things are expensive, and not all hotel franchisees are willing to invest in them. But I think you need to start to mandate that they do because we consumers are only getting more peeved about our check-in experiences (and some big-time CEOs are too).

5. People, stop the selfies and take in the actual sights around you! This wish is one I'd love to cross-off my list soon. Too often these days, it feels like too many people are using travel itineraries for the Amazing Race of Selfies than truly experiencing the destination to which they spent money and time to get to. For those of us who enjoy actually taking in these sights, your abundant presence is an unwelcome impediment. Worst still, in years from now when you’re asked to describe your time at this place, what will you have to say about it if you didn’t really experience it? I’m sad for you. I hope you come to realize that the best part of travel isn’t the selfie you capture but all the untouchable memories you can create when you truly immerse yourself in that moment in time.

What's on your travel improvement wish list, Fair Reader? Please add yours in the comments section below.

Other articles of mine you might appreciate reading:

The Social Capital of Human Experiences

6 Objectives for Transforming the Customer Experience in Travel

Are We Really Prepared for a More Automated Future?