With so many convincing guidebooks, travel vloggers, and so-called travel “experts” claiming to know insider tips for an amazing vacation, it can be tough to figure out when you’re receiving bad travel advice.
When asked, “What has been the dumbest piece of travel advice you’ve ever been given?” frequent travelers of the internet jumped in with the travel tips they received that just weren’t helpful.
Think twice about this bad travel advice when planning your next vacation:
1. “Skip the touristy stuff”
“This always gets me—’skip the touristy stuff.’ Ok but, I don’t live or work here, therefore I am a tourist. I’m totally doing the tourist stuff.”
2. “The secret to a comfortable flight? Fly business class!”
“Every time there is an article about ‘how to have a comfortable flight’ they always say flying business class. Thanks for that! I totally never would have thought of that!!”
3. “Pack as much as you can, you’ll never know what you need”
“Dude was hauling 3-4 bags thru the airport like a sherpa, and when he sat down beside me, he was dripping with sweat. It was like sitting beside a sieve or an overflowing fountain or both. I thought he was going to pass out.
“Anyway we got to talking, and I eventually asked him for his #1 travel tip. Without hesitation, he said ‘pack as much stuff as you can because you’ll never know what you might need.’ When he said this I was so tempted to ask him which kitchen sink he took from home and in which of his four bags was it packed.”
4. “Booking your flight with a third party is safer!”
“I worked for an (EU) airline for three years in customer service. Unless the 3rd party is offering a big discount NEVER book with 3rd party.
“Some airlines will simply not help you if you’ve booked with a 3rd party.
“I’ve had passengers call me complaining that 3rd party sites randomly canceled their flight and just stopped responding to them.”
5. “Being nice to the gate agent will secure your upgrade”
“Every few years some [annoying] columnist who clearly hasn’t been on a plane for 20 years will give advice on how to score first-class upgrades on flights like boomer parents telling you how to get a job. Some of the gems:
“Dress professionally: You are more likely to get upgrades if you look like a business person
“Bring a gift like flowers or chocolates for the gate agent and pretend you are just stuck with extras and you thought they might like them.
“Why this doesn’t work: Airlines have very clearly defined rules [around] who gets upgrades and what order they go to. If there are empty premium cabin seats available, they go to their elite status frequent flyer program members, or passengers who paid full fare (aka people’s company that paid their ticket), or they will let people bid on upgrades.
“Airlines have also been getting really good at predicting demands on selling those seats, so fewer and fewer upgrade seats are even available anymore. Nowadays, on the off chance [that] there are no eligible passengers to upgrade and there are actually available seats? Airlines would rather let it go out than give it away, because it cheapens the experience for people who do pay for it.”
6. “Be spontaneous, don’t worry about booking your hotel in advance”
“I wasn’t quite liking my Airbnb in Florence, so thought I should look up a basic hotel room online. The last-minute prices were crazy, and it was a choice between just staying in the same Airbnb or abandoning Florence for a cheaper town.”
7. “You MUST stay longer!”
“Every time I get advice that I MUST stay in a place way longer than I have planned. Didn’t realize this was a thing until I joined travel [forums], and it is so pretentious.
“I spent 1.5 days in Edinburgh because that is the amount of time I had on that trip, and it was 100% the best decision I could have made. Fell in love with the city and Scotland and have since explored a lot more of it. Without that little bit of a taster I would have still not visited and missed out on amazing memories.
“I am not visiting to tick off boxes but rather have different experiences. No, I don’t want to visit 27 similar temples in one [Southeast Asian] city for two weeks. Having short, different experiences can still make for a worthwhile trip!”
8. “Always take the cheapest option”
“[I was told] to take a 16-hour bus instead of a 45-minute flight in Laos to save money. With a total saving of €23.”
9. “Are you sure you want to go there? It’s so dangerous!”
We all have them—the friends and family members who barely travel but can’t help but offer bad travel advice, often related to safety about states and countries that aren’t dangerous at all.
“Family members and coworkers kept telling me I was crazy to travel to Japan by myself as a single female, that it’s too dangerous and also way too expensive. None of them have ever been to anywhere in Asia let alone Japan. I had a freaking blast and never once felt worried or like I was in a sketchy situation. Japan is SO safe. Also, everything is significantly cheaper than here.”
This article was written and syndicated by What the Fab.
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Elise Armitage is an entrepreneur and founder of What The Fab, a travel + lifestyle blog based in California. At the beginning of 2019, Elise left her corporate job at Google to chase her dreams: being an entrepreneur and helping women find fabulous in the everyday. Since then, she’s launched her SEO course Six-Figure SEO, where she teaches bloggers how to create a passive revenue stream from their website using SEO. Featured in publications like Forbes, Elle, HerMoney, and Real Simple, Elise is a firm believer that you can be of both substance and style.
