Other People are bad enough ... but Other Tourists truly are the pits
Are summer holidays worth the bother, the expense, the sunburn, the heartbreak, the disappointment, the utter, utter horror? All year we look forward to our annual break and what happens?
Drunks have sex next to you on the flight, car hire firms rip you off and so do taxi drivers, waiters, landlords and banks. It is £55 for four ice creams in rome, £8 for a coffee in Paris, £300 a night for a basic hotel room on Formentera, £180 for grilled lobster anywhere near the sea.
In addition, listen to me, you could get carjacked in Miami, mugged in Cape Town and fleeced just about everywhere.
I’ve just received a letter from a U.S. hotel I stayed in last year informing me of a ‘potential misuse’ of my banking information because of a data breach on their reservations system. It’s infuriating!
Hotels demand the assurance of all your personal details not upon arrival, but upon booking. They even have the right — I’ve never understood why — to ring- fence huge amounts of money in your account to guarantee their bill plus random extras.
Yet after extracting every last cent from your online piggy-bank, they can’t even ensure that your sensitive details are safe from hackers. Pathetic.
No wonder being a customer of the world these days has turned into such a trying affair.
It is never about the rights of the consumer, always about the traveller being consumed.
Bitter experience has taught me that price is no discriminator. expensive hotels in capital cities will be just as likely as a cheap B&B to give you a lumpy bed in a dusty room, with crispbreads and jam for breakfast.
THE swimming pool that looked so attractive in the brochure? A boiling soup of e.coli, dandruff and kiddy-pee.
And prepare yourself for the real wellspring of misery of any holiday — other people.
Other People are bad enough at the best of times, but Other Tourists are the pits. They fight over sun-loungers, wear unforgivable shorts, recline their seats on planes, sneeze glutinously without using a handkerchief, hog the bar, the buffet and the armrest — and play noisy games on the beach while failing to discipline their rowdy children.
In pursuit of their own enjoyment, they feel no compunction about invading the space and serenity of other holidaymakers, crashing about like a herd of marauding wildebeest in their Primark polyester tops or Vilebrequin trunks.
The normal rules and regulations that keep society more or less functioning are disregarded bloody vacances. earlier this year, Channel 4’s Secret Life Of A Holiday resort series showed Brits on the Costa del Sol chowing down 6,000 calories a day at all-you- can- eat buffets, plus stealing products from hotel cleaning cupboards and even unscrewing and pocketing lightbulbs to take home.
I still burn with national shame at the memory. Perhaps even more annoying are holidaymakers who think nothing of trying to store tombstone-sized pieces of carry- on luggage in overhead plane lockers, plus three carrier bags, a litre of vodka and a stuffed donkey — then get offended when they are told off.
Yet — big-hearted me! — I still have sympathy with the mother and daughter who were forced to sleep on the floor of Alicante airport after ryanair refused to let them board their return holiday flight to Manchester because their luggage was 2cm too big.
Yes, rules are rules but even by ryanair’s standards, their treatment seems rather harsh — as was the airline’s refusal to work towards a compromise that could have prevented Tania Alston and her 12-year-old daughter sleeping on a concrete floor for 14 hours.
Here was a mother spending her last penny on a holiday she probably couldn’t really afford. And like millions of British tourists this year, she was probably shocked at the brutal exchange rate. But sadly, with passenger experience at British airports getting worse and worse every year, Miss Alston’s treatment is becoming the norm.
ONCE, it was commonplace to be treated like a customer whose business was worth having, who had paid for a service, facility or provision and had a right to be treated as a valued client.
Now that decency has gone. International travellers are treated like irksome cattle from whom maximum cash is extracted with minimum grace.
The system always works in their favour, never yours. even the thought of passing through an airport makes me feel ill, while the prospect of renting a car abroad put me off my usual springtime trip to France. I just can’t bear the hassle.
So this summer I staycationed in my beloved west Cornwall.
You know where you are down there, with surly service in pubs, derision from outsider-hating locals, spotty weather and bad art in expensive galleries. Yet everyone was having a great time!
I was full of admiration for families who would spend their day on the beach. Tents would be erected, dads would hammer windbreaks into the sand, mums would unpack picnics while the kids ran around in a whip of fresh air and joy all day.
It didn’t cost much but it looked like a lot of fun.
A strengthening wind, a crab sandwich, a bucket, a spade and not a ryanair check-in desk in sight? If you must insist on having a holiday, you selfish wretches, then perhaps this is the way to go.