Choice is a curse as well as a blessing

Sometimes it’s nice to let others make decisions – and if your airline collapses you won’t be out of pocket

Thousands of passengers are set to be repatriated after the collapse of Monarch Airlines, including those on flight-only deals. But what will happen to customers who haven’t yet gone abroad is rather up in the air, so to speak. Those who booked a package deal will have nothing to worry about, save for the inconvenience. But anyone who organised their holiday independently – booking flights, accommodation and car separately – will probably be wishing they hadn’t.

Yet in the age of internet democratisation, in travel and beyond, there’s a peculiar pressure to go it alone, find bargains, bypass the middleman. And so chat rooms have replaced advice. Comparison websites have supplanted experts, and even the pleasure, the leisure of browsing John Lewis or Marks & Spencer has been gazumped by the onus to shop online.

The fact you can do it at 4am in your pyjamas somehow only highlights the solitary joylessness of the experience. The world wide web was supposed to make things easier and speedier and more connected. Instead, crazily, it has created a fragmented DIY culture where we are expected to hunt and gather the best deals regardless of how long it takes or how ill-equipped we are to pass judgement on any of them.

Where once there were brokers, dealers and go-betweens, now we face a yawning no-man’s land where nothing lies between us and our dream holiday or house insurance or fixed-rate mortgage but options. Lots and lots of dizzying, daunting options.

Choice is both the main blessing and chief curse of capitalism. Take the toothpaste aisle of my supermarket where I, a mere end user, am expected to assess the relative merits of cavity protection, whitening, total whitening, deep clean whitening, luminous whitening, original care, complete care, Arctic fresh and who gives a luxe diamond ultra monkey’s as long as you can squeeze it onto a toothbrush?

If I can’t be sure of which toothpaste is best, how can I be certain which investments are wisest? Is cheapest always best if it means you have no come-back if something goes wrong?

And I find talking to another human being is almost always nicer than swiping a screen or pressing on a keyboard. Yet my circle of friends would think me a fool if I were to ’fess up to having a financial adviser or a mortgage broker (which I do), although curiously everyone has a car mechanic and nobody in their right mind would countenance building work without a project manager.

But change is in the air when it comes to holidays. A 2016 survey revealed that young professionals are gravitating towards package holidays because they are less stressful; 1.5 million more people booked a package in 2016 than in 2015.

I went on a package par excellence a few years ago; a Thomson (now Tui) all-inclusive break in Sharm El Sheikh, before the Egyptian tourist industry so tragically imploded due to terrorism. It was fabulous; the only dilemma was what to select from the sprawling buffet. Except it wasn’t really a dilemma because you could always eat it tomorrow. How great was that?

There was none of the usual arguing FOLLOW Judith Woods on Twitter @ Judithwoods; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion at the airport with my husband over whether to take a bus (cheaper, but we have no idea where it will drop us off) or a cab (more likely to get us to our hotel unless he murders us en route). Instead, we waited with all the other happy sheeple and were herded onto a coach. The right coach.

Because here’s the thing; sometimes I like a week off from being in charge of everybody and everything. Sometimes I like to relinquish control to someone else in a scenario where the only safeword I’ll ever need is “all-inclusive”, and if the air con doesn’t work there is a holiday rep to shout at someone for me.

Middlemen tend to get a bad press because it usually looks as though they are cashing in. But, as with insurance, when you need them, they are a godsend. I was stranded at a hotel in Tunisia in 2010 when Iceland’s volcanic ash cloud caused air chaos. Fortunately a group of us had booked with an upmarket British travel firm, who graciously negotiated a longer stay for which we were not billed and, eventually, alternative flights home.

Those guests who had travelled independently fared less well. That’s the trouble with saving a few bob to go it alone; when the going gets tough that’s exactly how you’ll end up. Alone.