Dear All Travel Websites,
May I firstly thank you for all your efforts in providing me with reasonably priced accommodation in the many and varied places to which I travel for both work and pleasure. As a busy man with little time to be ringing around hotels looking for decent prices your service is both simple and convenient and for this I applaud you. However I did just have one minor gripe that I’d like to address with you if you’d be so kind.
Your emails… What happened??!
In days of old you would each send me a very occasional email filled with attractive ways to discover destinations that I could dream wistfully of visiting. Places like New York, Mauritius, Beijing. Places with breathtaking views, white sandy beaches, sunshine, unbelievable architecture, history and culture. Opening my inbox on a cold dark monday morning used to fill me with so much hope, it used to open my mind to the dream of a glorious, relaxing holiday in the most quixotic and luxurious of your vast array of perfectly idillic destinations. In even the darkest of days I could scroll slowly through that email knowing that this is the stuff that hopes and dreams are made of. One day I would take you up on these offers. One day… one glorious, exultant day.
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Opening my inbox to find a vast array of special offers for staying at Peterborough Service station however is scarcely the stuff that dreams are made of. Whilst I agree that a McDonalds breakfast is a deadly yet strangely delicious treat and that the service station’s toilet facilities are indeed “average or better” (perhaps necessarily so after breakfast), it’s still not a prospect that I am necessarily aspiring to.
Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that my recent booking behaviour may indeed have consisted largely of Premiere Inn’s and other reasonably priced hotels with easy access to motorways within spitting distance of a wedding venue but this is really more of a necessity than a dream. Indeed sending me a list of hotels in which spitting distance is in fact often remarked upon in the cleanliness reviews is not quite the bright spark to a dreary Monday morning that it used to be.
So please, I know the honeymoon period may be over but I’d still prefer the dream of holidays in the sun to the drudgery of practicality on the M1. Unless you bear news of the M1 roadworks actually being completed and the average speed camera zones being lifted that is, for truly that is the greatest dream that was ever dreamt!
So let us live the dream together. Yes I may never take you up on them but at least we will each have something to aspire to: Me having a 5 star break and you receiving more than the £30 a night that the hotels you’re sending me will earn you.
Yours sincerely,
A weary traveller.
