Travel companies often have to deal with people who are unhappy about bad accommodation and food, or lost luggage. But according to Britain’s leading tour operators, holidaymakers also try to get compensation for some very strange…
One company received a complaint from a parent who was unhappy about the fish in the sea. ‘No one told us there were fish in the sea’, he wrote. ‘My children were startled!’ Another customer wrote, ‘A mosquito bit me. No one told us they bite!’
It isn’t the local wildlife that causes problems. One holidaymaker complained about the beach: ‘The sand in the brochure looked yellow but when we got there, we found it was white’. Another unhappy customer wrote, ‘We had to queue and there was no air – conditioning outside’.
A travel agent spokesman said, ‘In the past, going abroad was a real treat. But people are travelling abroad much more nowadays and they don’t accept anything that they are not happy with’. 
Even geography, it seems, can be a problem. One customer complained angrily because British tourists had to travel nine hours to reach their holiday destination (Jamaica) and American tourists got there in just three hours.
Another British holidaymaker wrote: ‘There were too many Spanish people. The hotel staff spoke Spanish and the food was Spanish.’ And where did the woman choose to book her holiday? Spain, of course!
Airtours deal with 17, 000 customer complains every year. They use complaints like this to help their staff deal with the problems they may meet in the summer. A spokesman for the company said they always take genuine complaints seriously even if they are sometimes strange. ‘We give holidaymakers as much information as we can about their trip but sometimes there are still problems. When things go wrong, people feel they need to blame someone. They always think the travel customer is responsible.
Perhaps the most extreme example was the woman who wrote, ‘My husband and I asked for a twin – bedded room but the hotel put us in a room with a double bed. I am now pregnant and in my opinion your company is reaponsible’.