‘Booking a holiday has become a nightmare! Bring back travel agents!’

Are British travellers giving up on OTAs (online travel agents) as being bot-infested, fiendishly complex and more trouble than they’re worth?

In-the-know Spectator magazine columnist Zoe Strimple, in a piece headlined ‘Booking a holiday has become a nightmare! Bring back travel agents!’, thinks they might be. 

She writes: ‘Back in the 1980s, travel agents controlled 90 per cent of all holiday bookings in the UK, face-to-face or via phone, with thousands of agencies and high-street branches.’

But that was then. Now, she writes, ‘not only is actually getting to your destination hell … but booking it all in the first place has become an impossible burden.’

‘The exact thing that killed the travel agent is the very thing that’s murdering the fun of travel: the saturated, direct-to-consumer, social media-splattered ecology of the internet!’

‘Mental cost’

And she concludes: ‘As things stand, the mental cost of planning outweighs the pleasure of travelling!’

Speaking for ourselves, we at TGH&S are pretty sure that Brit holidaymakers, especially those heading for Sri Lanka’s sylvan shores, are more resilient than that.  

But Ms Strimple nevertheless does have a point. 

Which is why we ensure that for our ‘bookender’ guests, those who stay a night or two at the beginning and end of their island tour, the whole business of arrival and departure is as smooth and enjoyable as possible!

And that from direct booking online to airport pick-ups and drop-offs, restorative Spa Secret treatments and a Salt restaurant menu second to none, the pleasure of travelling really does still prevail!