People in the services industry or in any industry for that matter go into business for the sole purpose of making profits, something which rings true even in the travel industry, despite what the service providers’ mission statements and vision declarations may be. They’re only in it for the money otherwise they wouldn’t be in it at all.
That said though that doesn’t mean that you won’t get good service and that no airlines or places of accommodation will go out of their way to make your experience of their service an excellent one. All I’m trying to communicate is that it’s a fair-exchange type of setup, or at least that’s what it should be. You should accept every bit of value for which you’re paying and in many instances this would mean having to be a little proactive about it.
So you have to take it upon yourself to make sure to squeeze every last bit of value out of every last pound you spend so that you at the very least get your full money’s worth. In some instances you can stretch things a little to get more than the value you pay for, but that would perhaps be in some special cases since the profit margins between the actual value of the service you pay for while travelling and what you pay are quite wide. If we’re to get a bit technical with this analysis, taking into account something like the fare you pay for the flight ticket you buy, you don’t really have a choice but to pay the price on offer since you can’t for example build your own plane and then fly that cheaper than your plane ticket over the same distance.
So there’s nothing you can do about those types of money-to-value ratios, but some of which you can do something about are those which entail the likes of your accommodation. If there’s something like a free laundry service, make full use of it because it’s not really free. It’s just worked into the price and the same goes for the “free Wi-Fi” most hostels offer – it’s all part of the price you pay for your stay, which is why I kill it by downloading to my heart’s content.
On board the plane, order drinks to your heart’s content, but obviously within reason because you don’t want the sort of trouble which follows a drunken traveller once you land. That’s one of the only ways through which to maximise on the value which is made available to you through your purchase of your ticket and while we’re on the subject of flights, if you’ve ever been subjected to a flight delay of three hours or more, you could be eligible to file a delayed flight claim from which compensation can come in the form of a very useful payout of over £500 and the travel gods know just how far that can go as an extra part of any traveller’s budget.
Otherwise the traveller who just sits by and passively takes what gets given to them as part of the many services related to travel is simply not getting full value for the money they spend.