Opinion
Stop whingeing: The 10 most complained about things in travel
Brian Johnston
Travel writerThe naysayers have plenty to naysay about the awfulness of certain aspects of travel, but it’s time to stop whingeing and put things in perspective.
Budget airlines
Budget airlines criss-cross European and all other skies, offering endlessly flexible ways to get around at very low cost. Credit: iStock
Who doesn’t complain about budget airlines and their surcharges, delays and cramped, uncomfortable seats? Well, not me. I grew up in Europe and remember when flights from Geneva to London cost a week’s salary. Now they cost an hour’s. Budget airlines criss-cross European and all other skies, offering endlessly flexible ways to get around at very low cost. They’re as safe as full-cost airlines, and the planes are often newer. Budget airlines revolutionised travel: something to celebrate.
Airports
Airports a doorway to teleportation that most humans in history have never enjoyed.Credit: Alamy
So you moan about walking 500 metres along a corridor as part of your 12,000-kilometre journey across the planet? OK then. I consider airports a doorway to teleportation that most humans in history have never enjoyed. Airports are incredible: Atlanta, the world’s busiest, processed 61.2 million passengers in 2023. And airports keep us safe, so instead of huffing when asked to take your shoes off at security, be grateful that your airline won’t be blown up or hijacked.
Solo supplements
Solo travellers shouldn’t expect discounted rates on hotel rooms.Credit: iStock
Yes, we hate supplements when travelling alone, but is this discrimination against solo travellers, or understandable economics? Rates are charged by room, not by person. You don’t expect to pay half price for a new car just because you’re single, so why expect it when you check into a hotel? The hotel still has to provide the space and the cleaning, and its chance at revenue in restaurants and bars is halved. Seems unfair to expect a discount.
Tour groups
Niche tours take you off the beaten track or focus on particular interests.Credit: Damien Raggatt
Escorted journeys are scorned by “real” travellers, and yet it’s wrong to dismiss them as unadventurous. Many participants are widely travelled, active and inquisitive, and they choose to tour for perfectly valid reasons: up-front pricing, all-inclusiveness, security, and the joy of avoiding travel’s hassles. Besides, touring has evolved enormously. Active tours take you hiking and cycling, niche tours take you off the beaten track or focus on particular interests, and standards are ever more luxurious.
Authenticity
Once-poor places now blossoming with skyscrapers and McDonald’s have “lost their authenticity”, as if these places can never progress. (Pictured: The Rosewood Phnom Penh)
How travellers like to mutter that this neighbourhood or that village is no longer authentic, as if authenticity is set in stone, and nowhere ever changes. Usually the dismay is applied to once-poor places now blossoming with skyscrapers and McDonald’s outlets, as if poverty is more picturesque and authentic than social and economic improvement. Or as if culture never adapts to outside influence. And how are well-heeled tourists less authentic than backpackers? Who knows. How tribal we are.
Cruise ships
Silversea’s ships have a butler service.Credit: Silversea
None of us remembers when it took six months at sea to get anywhere, while eating weevil-infested biscuit, dodging plague rats and hoping not to be shipwrecked. If we did, we’d have a higher opinion of cruise ships, which offer astonishing luxury and fine dining, all while transporting us from one port to another in ridiculous ease. The complexity of cruise-ship operation and supply is an impressive achievement of human ingenuity.
Cruise ships – again
And now you’re going to say that cruise ships are floating petri dishes, but where does perception meet reality? Of course there were COVID outbreaks on cruise ships, some bad – there were outbreaks everywhere. But the industry was disproportionately targeted by government regulation and the media during the pandemic. It has implemented more stringent protocols than airports, hotels or other places where large numbers congregate. Cruise ships aren’t virus free, but our view could be more balanced.
Overcrowding
The Louvre has plenty of paintings better than the Mona Lisa.Credit: Markus Schreiber
If you spend your holiday complaining that the world is too full of tourists, then I have two bits of advice. One, stay at home, because you’re contributing to the problem. Two, if you spend your whole time in crowds then it’s your fault for only doing the predictable. Sometimes you need only walk a hundred metres from main drags in Venice or Barcelona to find empty streets, and the Louvre is full of paintings better than the Mona Lisa.
Foreigners
If I were given a yuan each time I heard privileged white tourists whinge about too many Chinese tourists then I’d be wealthy. I suspect Indians and Brazilians might be complained about next. Why privileged white people have more right to tour the planet is never explained. I lived in China in the late 1980s when it seemed the Chinese would never have the opportunity to travel abroad. I’m delighted that, like me, they’ve achieved that chance.
Taxis
New York’s yellow cabs are a cultural experience.Credit: iStock
Share rides are well and good providing you have phone connectivity and the right app, but thank the travel gods for taxis, which are omnipresent and a great fall-back for the lost, wary or time-tight. Sure, there are some rogue operators, but on the whole taxis get you where you want to go, and not always at more expense. Plus, they can be a cultural experience: London black cabs, New York yellow cabs, and India’s wonderful Hindustan Ambassadors.
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