Standards are falling in the travel industry

Travelmole Comment by Jeremy Skidmore

Are you proud of the service you offer? Have your standards improved over the last few years?

At just about every travel conference and seminar that I’ve attended this decade, speakers have preached about how companies must raise their game. I’m fed up to the back teeth of hearing smarmy business people tell all and sundry to ‘surprise and delight’ their clients.

And, if the experts are to be believed, standards have shot up to match the ever-increasing demands of today’s consumer.

But have they? Some worrying statistics unveiled by ABTA tell a very different story.

Ironically, at a time when the Office of Fair Trading has given its seal of approval to ABTA’s Code of Conduct, the association has revealed that it received 17,196 complaints against members in 2005 – up 18% on the previous year and the highest figure since 2001.

As always, the biggest source of grievance is poor accommodation, which attracted 3,507 complaints last year, compared with 3,156 in 2004. Apparently, that can include anything from people moaning about having to queue up in the dining room for dinner, to finding cockroaches under their bed.

Administrative problems, such as companies not returning calls or sending out tickets late, was the second biggest source of complaints (1,986), although this was significantly down on the 2004 figure of 2,561.

Company representatives abroad attracted 813 complaints, a steep rise from the previous year’s 336. The list goes on.

A few things stand out. Essex-based Cruise Control skewed the figures by attracting hundreds of complaints before going bust.
There was also a ‘force majeure’ category, which included grievances against travel companies over the tsunami, hurricanes and terrorism. It’s hard not to sympathise with tour operators over this section. They moved heaven and earth to get people out of affected areas and yet that still wasn’t good enough for some holidaymakers.

But there’s no disguising that the rise in complaints is a significant problem. ABTA has tried to shrug it off by saying standards have not fallen, but instead we live in a complaint culture, fuelled by television programmes criticising holidays. It also says that more people travel long haul and can have unrealistic expectations of what to expect in third-world countries.

I don’t entirely buy that. More people are unhappy with tour operators and travel agents at a time when an increasing number are opting to put together their own packages anyway. The omens are not good.

The big companies insist that they have worked hard to improve their standards and have seen a fall in complaints. My sources say this is true, particularly as most of them now make much greater efforts to sort out problems in resort, instead of allowing them to fester and result in much bigger complaints when the clients return home.

But some companies clearly aren’t up to scratch (the big jump in complaints against reps abroad is particularly worrying). They need to take a long, hard look at themselves.

What do you think of the state of the industry? Is there anything you should be doing to improve your service?

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