What is the travel professional's responsibility when travelers don't say what they mean?

Question

There are commonly known missued terms in the travel arena that I think travel professionals should be aware enough of that they question travelers when they hear them. For instance, the two most common BY FAR are "direct flight" (which means that the flight number does not change between origin and destination, and which will DEFINITELY make at least 1 intermediate stop-otherwise it's "nonstop") and "adjoining rooms" (which means hotel rooms which are side by side and does not guarantee that an inner door connects them). When a flyer asks for a "direct flight", I think the airline employee or travel agent should ask something like "how many stops are you willing to make or would you like to only look at those with no stops"? And when a hotel guest asks for "adjoining rooms", the reservationist or clerk should ask something like "do you need those rooms to connect"? I think the misunderstanding of these terms causes so many unnecessary complaints. What do you think?

Answer 1

Good point. Really I'd think that "direct flight" and "adjoining rooms" are travel agent "jargon" if the meaning is different than what the general public means when they use the term. This is a problem because I would think the main job of a travel agent is to serve as a broker between the consumer and the travel industry. In order to represent your client's interests, clear communication is essential.

Answer 2

Not as simple as that always. The definition of adjoining is " having a common boundary or edge; touching" if a person wants 'connected' rooms they should ask for that.

I sell airline tickets. Unless you know a plane's route it is not obvious that a direct flights is not non-stop. It shows up on the computer with one flight number and a departure time from the starting city and a landing time in the final city. So the person selling you the ticket probably also doesn't know. And a travel agent especially won't know all the routes for all the airlines. A passenger's best bet is to look at the travel time. Ones with stops will take a lot longer to get to the destination.

No, we are not psychic. If a traveler doesn't tell us what they want, we can't be expected to give it to them. I'll try, but I can only do so much.