If you follow the guest reviews on web forums — and, to be honest, I try not to do that too closely for fear of my sanity — you’ll notice that a lot of travellers don’t know what they are getting themselves in for when they hand over their money.
My attention was recently drawn to a review from a passenger who’d previously experienced one of the Cunard Queens and then took a cruise with another, less expensive, American line.
The person noted that they had “never seen so many tattoos and baseball caps” in their life. Apart from the obvious reaction — this that person ought to get out more — it occurred to me that they had been very poorly advised.
If they had booked with an agent and had asked the right questions, they would’ve known what type of people typically holiday with that company, along with a lot of other useful information. Heck, they’d have only had to look at the pictures on the cruise company’s website to have known what they were in for.
It seems to me that a lot of travel is booked in haste and repented at leisure.
These days there really is no excuse, for example, to book with a budget airline and expect the perks of business class on a five-star carrier. Nor to go to a backpackers’ hostel and want a private bath and room service.
There are a couple of basic rules of travel. One of them is to make sure you know exactly what you’re paying for. And the other is to know that you generally get exactly what you paid for.
If you don’t get what you wanted and it’s because you didn’t do your homework, there’s really only one person to blame.
