See them here.
I especially like the first one listed: “A tourist at a top African game lodge overlooking a waterhole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel ‘inadequate’.”
But the third one, about the beach being too sandy, is good, too.
“What do you mean, there’s curry in India? I thought it was just British!”
I feel happy that it’s not just American’s that say stupid things.
You’re missing a much funnier story if you haven’t clicked the link on that page for The world’s best passenger complaint letter.
Don’t forget to follow along with the pics at the top.
So…a holidaymaker is a tourist, not someone who works for Hallmark? (Hey, when’s Sweetest Day, again?)
I too was thinking that when I read the title. I thought it was an odd thing. I familiar enough with the term *Holiday *for *Vacation *- some of my friends are Brits - but it didn’t connect.
That’s actually quite sweet.
“No one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled!”
In Costa Rica, tourists often complain about animals. The iguanas are staring at them, there is a spider outside (spiders are seen almost as a “good luck charm” by the locals, since they eat mosquitos and mosquitos transmit dengue fever), the butteflies move too fast…
As my Costa Rican clients put it, “they come here to do ecotourism but want the animals to be all properly classified and boxed, like in the zoo!”
I use to work in an CR for a tour company.
A couple off the top of my head:
" Soap was not replaced daily in our bathroom and shower. This is very unhygenic."
A customer was drunk (and a certified, experienced scuba diver) dove head first into the shallow end of the pool. Had to be airlifted to Miami. Tried to sue our company. DENIED. ( She actually made a full recovery we later heard via the lawyer.)
A passenger was thrown out of a hotel for being a drunken fighting idiot. A local rep down there got him into another hotel we offered that was comparable. He got thrown out of that one too. ( Every night a new hotel.) Came to us asking for his money back.
(I think this is the same guy that actually called us to demand his money back and he went on and on and on and on in an angry drunk manner and somehow it came up that he was from Maine - our flights were out of Detroit only. So I was a little confused. Our packages to Cancun were cheaper out of Detroit than out of his area. Saved him** $50.** I figured if there were say 20 people in the group, I still wouldn’t drive from Maine to Detroit for $50 x20, via Canada. You’ve got at least 10-12 hours driving/car parking fees/hotel fees/food and gas.This guy was a moran of the highest order and at one point he said to me, " I’m not some drunk guy from Maine." Oh, yes you are, buddy. Yes.you.are..
Customer complained that the Cancun hotel was filled with partiers from South America and we should have advised them foreigners would be staying there at that time.
Two teenage spring breakers were ‘held’ hostage by the hotel staff on the morning they were to depart to come back home. Somehow they gave the staff the slip and made a run for it for the airport. Told mommy what happened when they got back home. She calls us up on Monday AM screaming mad. We had a fax in the office from not only the hotel, but our rep and the cops stating her precious boys had drunk about $500 ( or whatever) bill worth of food and booze for them and their new best friends forever and decided to sneak out the night before via the beach. The hotel, use to these shenanigans, were prepared and easily spotted them with their suitcases at 2am going down by the pool area. DUUUUUUUUH! When I read the letter to the Mom, her tone changed and she said, " Oh, I seeeeeee."
My personal favorite was a long, complaining about EVERY ASPECT of the trip in specific detail. ( traffic to the airport, weather of departing city, unfriendly fellow travelers, too warm in Mexico, food is not like at home, no ice cubes, sand is too hot, pesos are hard to work with, vendors on the beach…etc. Kids are fighting. Got sunburn. Sand in my crotch. General whiny with no real valid complaints regarding the hotel/air/staff.) This goes on and on for four pages. Hand written. on teddy bear stationary. By a Man. the PS of this Manifesto was :
PS: fell in shower on the last night and broke my arm.
WHAT THE HELL?
Imagine how the fish felt!
Ah, that’s right! I’m so used to using “holiday” for “vacation” now – standard over here – that I’d completely forgotten it’s British usage and didn’t think about that.
Here are some more gems that were posted on another message board:=
*The Americans are the best at complaining. We heard some good ones in Mexico.
The hotel didn’t serve Budweiser (but it did serve three different Mexican beers).
Too much Mexican food on the menu.
The Mexican food didn’t taste anything like Taco Bell so it wasn’t really Mexican food.
Some staff members didn’t speak very good English.
An irate woman shouting at a hotel staff member because she was on the beach and the wind blew sand in her face
Another woman was wailing on her sun-lounger as the hotel only had one small shop. She kept yelling “I wanna shop. I need a mall.” errr so why did you book a hotel the middle of a Mexican jungle?*
And
*Having worked as a Travel Agent for the best part of 20 years none of these surprise me.
The best I had was a complaint from a British tourist about not having a sea view room in Orlando*
And finally
My good lady once heard an American tourist complain that they shouldn’t have built Windsor Castle under the Heathrow flightpath.
Wow. “No told me that mosquitos bite”- what planet has this guy been living on?
“they didn’t tell us we had to bring our own bathing suits and towels”
If the brochure doesn’t state that these items will be provided, assume that they won’t be.
I aked a bus driver in Denali National Park what sorts of questions he got. A couple of them: “Why do they let the trees grow so close to the side of the road?” “Do black spruce burn?”
A common question in Juneau, Alaska is: “How far above sea level are we?” The best answer I’ve heard to that one is “At high tide or low tide?”
I was in one of our local bike shops listening to a man demanding that he get the money back that he had spent for a bicycle tour of Courthouse Wash.
His complaint?
There weren’t any Courthouses.
Oh wow. I never heard of it before, but I want to go there now.
Yeah, it’s very pretty.
How much dye did you folks have to put in this here lake?
