What makes a travel experience great? Is it the comfort of your first-class airline seat or your six-star hotel bed?
Is it the availability of premium food or drink? Or is it, quite simply, the people who look after you?
I make no secret of, nor apologies for, the fact that I like creature comforts when I travel. I’ve written already about my preference for brand-name hotels, because you get all the good stuff and few, preferably no, nasty surprises (like pigeons falling through the ceiling).
One of the attractions of premium-class flight is that you are almost always guaranteed friendly attention from the crew. (I’m sure they mostly make the effort in economy class, too, but they have a lot more people to deal with so the personal touch is often absent.)
Then there’s those extra touches that make you smile. On an OmanAir flight, the crew cheerfully photobombed one of my selfies.
At the bar of a recent Emirates A380 flight, I got to know the multinational crew, and a little about where they came from, what their jobs entailed and what their ambitions in life were. Maybe my questions bored them, but they certainly persevered professionally.
Good, attentive service is impossible to fake, and treat to discover.
From the travel guide who can bring history and culture alive rather than just remember it from a script, to the bartender who remembers your order and person who cheerfully wheels your luggage to the check out, you should cherish them all.
One day, they’ll all be replaced by robots, and we’ll be the worse off for it.
