In which our correspondent bids farewell and imparts one final piece of wisdom
As frequent travellers, we are experts in saying goodbye. We say goodbye to our families most weeks, we say goodbye to the flight attendants as we leave the plane, we say goodbye to our colleagues at the end of the week, and to our sales contacts as we leave them, and then when we check out of the hotel, we bid a fond farewell while promising to come back as soon as possible.
There’s nothing depressing about most of these goodbyes. For one thing, sometimes you’re often glad to leave (even your family, dare I say it, after a combined Christmas and New Year). Also, to say goodbye you must first have said hello, and so if the number of greetings matches the number of departures, it’s really a case of personality whether you focus on one or the other. I prefer my glass to be half-full of hellos rather than half-empty of goodbyes.
This lengthy preamble leads me to say that it is with a light rather than heavy heart that I am saying cheerio to this column after six years of charting the pleasures and travails of the travelling life (more of the latter than the former, I’ll admit).
We’ve had our ups and downs during that period, and caused a fair amount of offence – mainly to fat fellow passengers, surly security staff and la-di-da lounge dragons. I would point out, though, that the column that got the most “feedback” – and I mean that in its broadest sense considering the shrill squealing involved – was not written by me but my female counterpart.
Back in 2010, no doubt after one long-haul too many sat by the bassinets, she gave a few choice opinions about children and their parents as she encountered them on her travels. All I can say, is the amount of noise involved certainly didn’t decrease as a result of the column.
You can read all the previous columns online, and that one in particular here, but for heaven’s sake don’t start the conversation off again – I’ve met her a couple of times in the Heathrow T5 Galleries lounge and she isn’t someone you’d want to mess around with. And I mean that in the broadest sense as well…
In all honesty, my decision to leave would perhaps have been more difficult if I had actually been paid for the columns. I’m afraid the crumbs from under the desks of the Business Traveller office – neon luggage tags, model aircraft, Arik Air cufflinks, those Virgin Atlantic plane-shaped salt and pepper shakers, a Delft house from KLM – were few and far between, and not worth declaring on my tax return.
If I were to leave you with one thought, it would be to repeat what I said some years back on the subject of loyalty programmes. And, for once, I’m going to get serious here. As any frequent flyer knows, miles are the crack cocaine of travel. For those who go abroad only a couple of times a year, they are incomprehensible and, yes, pointless (geddit?) but for the few of us who like to believe we are chosen, they are the most dangerous trap we can succumb to.
Long before social media sites started plumbing our personal information and selling it on to every other third-party website, we had happily been handing over reams of our personal information to these schemes. We let them distort our behaviour, staying in properties we wouldn’t otherwise have stayed in (I do love a 1970s airport hotel, especially when I can earn triple points), making detours through hubs we wouldn’t otherwise have visited (why not fly to the US via continental Europe? You’ll even save on APD!), and making purchases for promotions we wouldn’t have otherwise considered.
Many, if not most, of these programmes have been devalued in recent years, but instead of abandoning them, the cry is to somehow increase the strength of the drug once again, not least because our tolerance has grown. This is a great mistake, and one we will all pay dearly for as we are greeted by name at every touch-point of our travels while general service levels continue to plummet.
I will carry on travelling, and contributing to the forum, so perhaps we will meet there. Until then, I can only add that I believe status is not something the travel industry is able to bestow. Let’s travel, but not seek the reward. Happy flying.
Illustration by Ben Southan
