Please sign in to post.

Recent trends w.r.t traveling in Europe - your opinions

The way we travel and how travel services and experiences are organized is constantly changing. So I wonder, among relatively recent trends of the last 2-3 years, what are the ones you like, and the ones you dislike.

Here is my list to quickstart the topic

The good

  • minibars that come empty for you to fill with your items (minibar account settlements are always a source of aggravation)

  • end of roaming fees for European-issued GSM cards (major development that makes a traveler's life substantially easier)

  • the cashless travel era has truly arrived (litmus test: the ice-cream kiosk on street take cards) in several countries and is rapidly expanding in others. Germany and Austria are stubborn holdouts, though.

  • more and more busy attractions allow time-slot reservations with digital ticketing

  • major revamp of permanent collection displays in some of the World's top museums

  • Italian gourmet cuisine got a jolt of renewal and reinvention badly needed to refresh it (like it happened with French gourmet cuisine in the 1990s, or so I read)

The bad

  • TripAdvisor changed so much that it lost its value as a trusted travel directory (due to pay-to-play features for listings)

  • Driving foreign cars into other countries and especially their bigger cities has never been more complicated in regard of pollution stickers, environmental tolls etc., all requiring that you plan in advance such trips for the maze of ad-hoc regulations (I hope the EU standardizes the whole thing based on its emission standards categories)

  • street aggressive peddling for cheap goods, illegal stalls selling cheap stuff, aggressive panhandling all seem to have gotten worse in otherwise great cities like Rome and Paris.

  • The "Rail Alliance" promise of seamless airline-style high-speed rail ticketing is still unfulfilled

  • hotel rooms more and more have transparent or non-private showers, and it is hard to figure that out from most pics (it is an issue when traveling with a non-SO companion).

Posted by
4066 posts

The Ugly

  • Passengers taking off their socks on flight
  • Gate agents randomly picking you for last-minute carry-on search
  • A rail company cancels your train without advanced notification because you're not a member of a frequent travel program
  • The attempted mugging at Brussels Midi

Yes, none of these I hope becomes a trend!!

Posted by
14916 posts

A pretty accurate list.

"Germany and Austria are stubborn holdouts though." Bravo! I hope it stays that way.

Posted by
17344 posts

Good pickup, Continental.

I will have to start thinking about additions to "The Good" list.

Posted by
2289 posts

I wasn't pleased with the cashless idea on a train platform in the Netherlands last spring when I was unable to purchase a much-needed bottle of water from a machine that didn't accept cash.

Posted by
9200 posts

Count me as one of the fans who likes using cash rather than cards. Ability to use both is ideal.

Trip Advisor is still a hugely valuable resource for me to find tourist attractions, museums, hotels, tours, and restaurants. Sad they sold out to Viator and Expedia, but the maps are there, the websites are there and reviews are there. The forums are a treasure trove of great information too. I use the Destination Experts all the time when traveling to new cities.

Considering you can see photos of hotel rooms on their websites, why do people book rooms with transparent showers? I know I wouldn't.

Posted by
470 posts

I like the cashless idea as I find the ritual of having to go to the ATM quite annoying, but it can lead to a whole set of problems with foreign debit/credit cards. I experienced this first-hand on a trip to the Netherlands a couple of years ago as many businesses didn't accept any of my European-issued cards. I can't imagine places going card-only until issues like that get sorted.

Posted by
4684 posts

I get transparent showers with non-SO companions, but I find it an utterly bemusing cultural difference that people travelling with their spouse and/or small children are upset about them. When they refer to children I find it hard to understand how those children came to be created...

Posted by
4066 posts

Good pickup, Continental.

You asked a valid question (what a classic movie)! :-)

Posted by
3941 posts

We generally use a combo of cash and card when we travel - cc for the more expensive things (trains, sights, accoms) and take money out of the bank account for little things (meals, souvenirs) - I'm like that at home too though - a lot of people just use their debit/credit cards for everything - which is fine until there is a problem with the system (as happened at work back in Dec - anyone paying cash was golden - the other people either had to go to the generic, charges $3 to withdraw cash bank machine, come back later, or give up - the company hosting the system was down for over 2 hrs).

I like using cash as I have more of a handle on how much I have - if I just keep tapping that debit card, I'm going to overspend. We know how much money we have earmarked for the trip, so it's easier to stick to our budget.

Posted by
1332 posts

The good: Low cost carriers are also forcing the legacy carriers to lower prices. making European travel more affordable (at least from Chicago)

The Bad: Wow, passport control seems to have gotten worse with more people and first time abroad travellers. Also, all the extra security masquerade and silly rules that seem to turn on a dime. Finally, the 24 hour news cycle greatly exaggerates threats. It's annoying hearing about Chicago is the murder capital of the world and 'no-go' areas in European cities.

Posted by
11745 posts

Great thread! Zoe would have loved it!

The Good

  • www.Trainline.EU which has made (some) ticket buying easier, especially in Italy where it compares Trenitalia and Italo
  • Online reviews that have caused lodging providers to be more transparent. I dislike Trip Advisor as much as most Forum participants do but still, the presence of reviews by travelers gives us insight and an opportunity to better assess what we are getting into with a rental. Booking.com goes one better and I find I really trust reviews there.

The Bad

  • Panhandling in Rome. When we arrived in 2012 it was almost non-existent. When we left in late 2016 it was horrible how many young Africans had resorted to this or been forced into it by Organized Crime.
  • Vacation Rental Apartment mania. Is the apartment I rented legit? WIll my Paris apartment be taken away before I get to stay in it? And the sad state that Vacation Rentals are so lucrative that locals cannot live in their own cities. (Still I love renting apartments for our long stays, cooking in, living local as best we can.)
  • Airlines in general. Ugh. No customer service, money-grubbing, inconsiderate, but how the Hell else are we going to get anywhere?

I am sure I have more. Just need to think on it.

Posted by
1117 posts

"Germany and Austria are stubborn holdouts though." Bravo! I hope it
stays that way.

Yeah!

And if I may add to that, may it not be forgotten though it's a couple of years ago now: the invention of the Euro. Being able to pay with the same coins in Athens or Berlin really is a great achievement.

hotel rooms more and more have transparent or non-private showers

I am having trouble imagining what the problem is with that. As long as the shower is located in a private and non-transparent bathroom, what's the problem? Or are you seriously saying that you take a shower while your "non-SO companion" is sitting next to you on the toilet? In that case, I'd feel a lot more uncomfortable about privacy being the person sitting on the toilet...

Vacation Rental Apartment mania. Is the apartment I rented legit? WIll
my Paris apartment be taken away before I get to stay in it? And the
sad state that Vacation Rentals are so lucrative that locals cannot
live in their own cities.

Oh yes, good point! Something we experienced in Berlin long before anyone ever talked of AirBnB.

An elderly neighbor rang the doorbell and told us this was a purely residential building. Although we did at the time feel completely innocent since we had been given this apartment by what appeared to be a perfectly legal hotel company, I could completely understand his annoyance at having constantly changing neighbors, many of them probably partying all night, and commercial rental probably being illegal.

Posted by
3941 posts

Amen Karen - I've been with my husband for 27 years and will happily go another 27 without having to watch him do his business on the toilet. (And I guarantee he feels the same way).

I mean - the shower is one thing - fine - if either of us is in the shower and someone has to come into the bathroom to get ready for work, ok - but you aren't coming in there to use the toilet if I'm in the shower! We've never had kids, so perhaps I just never got used to having to share my toilet time with anyone (except the dog, who for some inexplicable reason likes to come into our small half bath and curl his 100lbs around my feet and the toilet).

Posted by
4066 posts

I am having trouble imagining what the problem is with that. As long
as the shower is located in a private and non-transparent bathroom,
what's the problem?

For one thing, light. This isn't a problem restricted to Europe. We've stayed at the Springhill Suites chain (part of Marriott) and too many times, the bathroom door is a glass door with very bright lights inside the bathroom. So if you're sharing a room, that bright light can wake you up if the other person is in the bathroom taking a shower or not.

Posted by
3526 posts

Sorry, not related to original post, but can someone tell me how to copy the OP’s original parts of post when u want to refer to something they said.
How do u get the line on the side showing its from the original post?

Posted by
1117 posts

Wow, that is incredible! I've never seen a hotel room with such a bathroom - fortunately!

Actually, it seems like "back to the 80s" to me: Before then, many European hotels would have one bathroom for several rooms somewhere down the hall. About then, people started expecting a private shower at least in their rooms, so hotel owners would start installing just the plain shower in hotel rooms that really weren't built for it and didn't have a private bathroom at all. So you ended up with a transparent and absolutely non-private shower right there in your bedroom.

I remember a friend of mine who proudly rented her first apartment in the 90s. With a shower of her own! It was an old building, and the landlord had only just recently installed the shower. In the KITCHEN. Well, the water appliances were already there... and no room in the tiny toilet area for a real bathroom!

We've never had kids, so perhaps I just never got used to having to
share my toilet time with anyone

I believe you would want even less of that when you have kids. I remember in the 90s, all our architectural magazines were full of "lofts": Huge apartments that consisted of basically one room only, no doors. Some went even to the extent of not having bathroom doors. Who would want to live in that kind of open space with zero privacy once you got kids?

@ diveloonie: Above the box where you write your post, there are a couple of symbols, among them some quotation marks. You can use those for quoting someone else's post.

Posted by
1321 posts

"Recent trends w.r.t traveling " ok so w.r.t ??? With regard to?

Posted by
4066 posts

Yes, w/r/t = with regard to

Wow, that is incredible! I've never seen a hotel room with such a
bathroom - fortunately!

Hopefully you never will! :-)

Posted by
3430 posts

Our hotel in Madrid had an opaque shower door. But the wall between the separate toilet and the bedroom was frosted and somewhat transparent - not really my thing! Luckily there was a barn style door that you could slide to cover up most of it.

Other than that, I loved the hotel (the Artrip) and would stay there again, even with that design element!

Posted by
8180 posts

I find TripAdvisor to be very useful in my research for hotels, restaurants and things to do. However, I also check other sources and reviews.
The key is to dig into the individual negative reviews for a hotel or restaurant as well as the good reviews.

I agree with most of what the other posts have indicated.

Posted by
11745 posts

Sorry, not related to original post, but can someone tell me how to copy the OP’s original parts of post when u want to refer to something they said.
How do u get the line on the side showing its from the original post?

diveloonie here is how you do it:

  1. Highlight the text you want to copy and right-click to copy or type CTRL+C to do so
  2. Click the "Add Reply" button
  3. Click on the large quote marks (") above. That will generate a >
  4. Click to the right of this > and either type CTRL+V or right-click and Paste.

Voila!

Posted by
1332 posts

I've had the transparent bathroom in modern places like Hub by Premier Inn and Z Hotel, but those hotels are aimed at solo travelers or couples and offer only one bed. I'm usually traveling solo, but when I've had close friends stay the night, it hasn't bothered me, but I can understand how it might others. I always look for pictures of a prospective hotel on Tripadvisor before booking.

One other good that hasn't been mentioned is electronic books. They are perfect for travel books, since they become dated quickly. Plus, it makes it easy to bring reading along for planes, trains, and hotel rooms. They save space and weight. I love having a variety of books with me, It's nice to have a new novel for the plane, but an old favorite for reading right before bed when you're exhausted and can't focus on a complex sci fi novel.

Posted by
1073 posts

While this is not a recent trend, the internet takes some of the spontaneity out of travel. Since everyone has to or probably should make hotel and museum reservations in advance, it make it more difficult to change plans at the spur of the moment. You are locked it to where you will be need to be on a given day because of having made reservations. If you try to wing it without reservations, the good hotels could be booked or you may be waiting in lines to see visit a particular museum or site. Also Eurail Passes are not as flexible as they used to be.

Posted by
1117 posts

While this is not a recent trend, the internet takes some of the
spontaneity out of travel.

Oh yes, absolutely!

We still like to pre-book only where we know it's going to be tight, like in a popular destination on a holiday weekend or in peak season, and just go where we like in between - and stop to stay longer if we like a place, or move on if it's not as exciting as we had hoped. That, in the past, has meant we have missed some tours that would certainly have been fascinating but were booked by the time we got there. However, in return, we gained a very relaxed vacation in those places we really enjoyed.

Posted by
21 posts

end of roaming fees for European-issued GSM cards (major development that makes a traveler's life substantially easier)

Yes! This made me so happy when it happened last summer!