Confessions of an Anonymous Travel Agent

To which I usually respond: “Ha!” Running a high-end travel agency means you deal with all manner of people with all manner of manners. Our clients can often be charming, but they are nearly always demanding. And for some, it seems, the main criterion for a successful vacation is seeing what they can get away with.

For instance, on one occasion a long-time client called to book a very well-known and particularly exclusive (read: expensive) European hotel. We’d worked with him and his family many times in the past, which included sending him and his wife to this same hotel. By this point, however, he was in the midst of an acrimonious divorce — and insisting to his wife that there was nobody else involved. Which is why we were surprised to see that he was taking ...