Is the travel industry in the US "broken"?

[Lord_Feldon]

@pullin

2. Airline losing my seat assignment, then putting me in middle-seat steerage. And charging me extra for trying to fix it via phone.

Was it a paid seat assignment or just a regular one?

[Voyager]

Does your company have a travel agency or travel office? Because I’d complain to them. The hotel sounds unacceptable, and your company should stop booking people there. (Oh they don’t clean all the time? That’s crap.) Ditto with the rental car discount.
Obnoxious people on the plane is the new norm. I count myself lucky not to have them.
Was it American? And how did they get the terminal wrong? That’s the only part I don’t understand. My last trip to DC I tried to book on American, but in all cases on the last leg the only seats left were paid upgrades, so I took United instead. Maybe I was lucky.

[Ken001]

First world problems…:smack:
Was on an aid project in India. One of the people we were building a new home for asked how far away our house was. The interpreter struggled and eventually said that if she walked towards the moon for three months she would come to the sea and our house was just over the horizon.
I travel on an aeroplane rarely and marvel every time.

[LSLGuy]

@Voyager

… Was it American? And how did they get the terminal wrong? That’s the only part I don’t understand. …

American uses 3 different terminals at DFW. Counting their various regional carriers, they use 4 terminals at DFW.

The OP said they changed arrival gates from one terminal to another. Which forced the OP to ride the inter-terminal shuttle train to get back to the originally planned terminal to retrieve their car.

[robert_columbia]

@LSLGuy

In effect we rent square feet of floor space by the hour. You want about double the floor space. So for that to work out even you’d need to be willing to pay roughly double the fare. Are you?

Sadly, not enough people are willing to do that. In fact many will gladly get on airplanes with even less legroom than the majors just to save $20. Unfortunately, the most aggressive bargain hunter KMart shoppers are crowding out most of any other possibility in the product space.

Believe me when I say most everybody in the industry would love to find a way to break the cycle of competing solely on price and the ability to ever-cheapen what used to be (40-ish years ago) a premium product for a premium customer base.

You might think that you could just get progressively more legroom by paying them more and more, but it doesn’t work like that. There are large fixed costs for setting up different classes. A few people might want to pay extra for 50% more legroom, while others want 150% more space. A few would be ok with 80% of the space as long as they could get unlimited high speed wifi. You can’t do this without spending lots and lots on constant plane reconfigurations, and those are quite pricey.

[Stuffy]

I used to travel regularly professionally but yet your list particularly long.

1. I’ve only had that happen with American. I’m pretty sure mine happened in Miami.

2. I’ve always reserved the smallest car I would find acceptable and nearly always end up with a larger upgrade.

3. I never expect a room to be ready prior to 3pm.

4. Always seems to be the case. I use my 4g as a hotspot instead.

[Procrustus]

I take around 25 round-trips via air per year. I encounter occasional problems, but nothing that would lead me to complain the industry is broken. I usually get nice hotel rooms, my rental car as ordered, and flights that are usually roughly on time.

[tullsterx]

Which airline?

I might fly once or twice a year or so. I don’t think I’ve ever had even one of the problems you cited. . . except the rational, normal people reclining on the airplane thing. . . which is not a problem in my book.