Booked the Wrong Thing? That’s On You : The Cruel Logic of Travel Retail

In travel, if you screw up, it’s your fault. Period.

It doesn’t matter if the system was confusing, the fare rules buried under 14 tabs, or the seat map lied to you. The industry’s operating principle—often unspoken but deeply embedded—is caveat emptor: let the buyer beware. And the result? An environment where making mistakes isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. A profitable one.

This post isn’t just about corporate travel or the occasional mispriced fare. It’s about the entire ecosystem of airline and agency retailing, where errors are engineered into the system, and trust is the missing ingredient.

The Customer is Always Wrong

Let’s start with a few cautionary tales.

• A traveler booked a flight from Birmingham UK to Birmingham, Alabama, thinking it was a round trip from England. Cue the panic and the $2,000 in change fees.

• A tourist used Kiwi.com to book a multi-leg journey with separate tickets. The first flight was delayed. The second flight—booked separately—took off without him. Neither airline took responsibility.

• A traveler booked a “basic economy” ticket on a legacy airline, only to find out that not only was baggage not included, seat assignment wasn’t either. She was separated from her toddler on the flight.

• A user trying to redeem frequent flyer miles through an OTA found the fare, clicked purchase, but the confirmation email said “pending.” Twelve hours later, the price had doubled. The points were never deducted, but the flight was gone.

In each of these cases—and thousands more like them—the response from the airline or agency is the same: “You agreed to the terms.” Even if those terms were designed to confuse.

Obfuscation by Design

Let’s not kid ourselves: complexity is profitable. Airline pricing, seating, bag policies, and loyalty schemes are deliberately convoluted. It’s not about giving customers choice. It’s about putting up just enough friction to extract more revenue while retaining plausible deniability.

If you make a mistake, the system is set up to punish you. You will pay change fees, no-show penalties, rebooking surcharges. Refunds? Only if you read 16 pages of fare rules and filed a claim in triplicate.

This isn’t a glitch. It’s a business model.

Self-Service, Same Old Screws

When self-service tools first entered the market—remember kiosk ticketing?—error rates skyrocketed. Consumers booked the wrong dates, confused AM/PM, misread airport codes. The industry response wasn’t to improve clarity. It was to harden policies.

Machines didn’t fix this. AI-powered interfaces haven’t fixed this. In fact, in many cases they worsened it by giving a false sense of intelligence to a system still running on 1980s rules logic.

Trust is the Rarest Currency

The travel industry has cultivated a toxic relationship with its end users. The customer has been trained to distrust prices, to expect hidden fees, and to assume that spending more time hunting means getting a better deal. It’s like a knife fight in a dark alley—and the airlines brought machetes.

Why is this tolerated?

Because for too long, the customer has had no meaningful power. Airlines with 90% load factors don’t need to be nice. GDS companies with 50%+ market share don’t need to innovate. OTAs squeeze margins and call it choice. And regulators? Asleep at the wheel, if not complicit.

We’re All to Blame—And That’s the Problem

Suppliers blame agencies. Agencies blame suppliers. Both blame customers. Customers blame everyone. It’s adversarial by default.

What we don’t have is cooperation. We don’t have common goals. And we definitely don’t have a framework built around trust.

There are glimmers of hope—perhaps the recent Amex/Accelya/Sabre announcement around NDC indicates that some gatekeepers are willing to loosen their grip. But don’t hold your breath.

Let’s Do Better (Or At Least Pretend We Tried)

What the industry needs isn’t another acronym. It needs a better social contract.

A contract where:

• Fare rules are intelligible to humans.

• Mistakes are forgiven (once).

• Customers aren’t treated as adversaries.

• Agencies and suppliers admit their data is often wrong—and fix it.

• Regulators remember they exist to protect the public, not guard the incumbents.

Until then? Bring a helmet, a lawyer, and maybe a priest the next time you try to book a flight.

Hashtags:

#Travel #ConsumerProtection #CaveatEmptor #AirlinePricing #GDS #CustomerExperience #ObfuscationEconomy #TrustDeficit