Travel spend is the highest discretionary purchase most people make in a year and they care deeply about both the travel and purchase experiences.

There are 30 million reviews on the Trustpilot platform and the insights contained help our travel customers to better understand how their customers feel about the product and service experience in both positive and negative terms.

One reviewer wrote “I was shocked that the price on the confirmation page was £50 higher than that I had authorised on the booking page!”

In this article I’m going to focus on some of the commonly articulated frustrations, because negative feedback is actually the most valuable feedback you can get.

So what gets travellers hot under the collar? From qualitative analysis of negative travel reviews on Trustpilot there are a range of familiar issues that pop-up persistently.

Inconsistent pricing

Many customer complaints relate to inconsistent or surprising pricing, far more so than other business sectors. Examples include prices that are lower during the booking process but which shoot up on the final confirmation page, perhaps now including taxes and charges as well as the actual core products.

Sometimes prices actually offered at confirmation are different to those presented during the search phase, perhaps linked to cached pricing used within the industry.

Travellers are often also confused by ancillary offers and websites where it’s possible to unintentionally add ancillaries. One reviewer wrote “I was shocked that the price on the confirmation page was £50 higher than that I had authorised on the booking page!” Firms should be as transparent as possible when it comes to prices. If a price might change during the shopping session then it’s important to make that clear, along with a total that includes all taxes and charges broken out. It’s safe to say your customers will respect you for transparency here.

Selling something you can’t deliver

This one is a common frustration. Customers that have pre-booked a service, perhaps an activity at destination or a hospitality ancillary like spa access, to later find out it can’t actually be delivered. One couple had pre-booked a football camp for their seven year-old son, only to arrive and discover it was no longer available. In an intermediated industry like travel inconsistencies like this are common. Based on reviews we researched on this issue what most customers are looking for is a speedy and immediate refund, alongside alternative options provided there and then. Any delay, or addressing this type of issue after the fact is already too late. Do you have a means of assuring your customers have received what they’ve booked with you? Poor responsiveness: another common theme in the travel industry is unresponsiveness. When something unexpected happens with a digital booking people want to know there’s a support function that can help them within a reasonable timeframe.

Being on hold for a long time or failing to get back in contact with a customer

Overall some customers are clearly frustrated by being made to feel they are one of very many bookings with relatively limited personal service offered when they need it. Some areas of the travel sector face a fiercely price-competitive environment so offering more bespoke service options isn’t always easy. One step we’ve taken at Trustpilot to help this issue is a secure integration with Zendesk so it’s at least more efficient to handle customer review interactions alongside other touchpoints.

Customers themselves provide a veritable gold mine of insights about how a business can improve its operations and focus. Listening to and acting on such feedback is still surprisingly rare, but offers significant opportunities to differentiate. So, when did you last read your negative reviews?

Alan Duncan is marketing director, Europe at Trustpilot