CHAPTER 3

Setting Expectations

(or I Only Want a Completely Perfect Trip: Is That so Much to Ask?)

What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven.

—Chuck Palahniuk

Chapter Preview

The importance of dreaming and then of setting realistic and achievable trip goals in the trip planning processes is discussed in this chapter. Common errors that we often make when thinking about our trip goals such as seeking perfection in our travels or trying to do too much in one trip are additionally examined, as well as strategies that a travel planner can use to help us avoid these roadblocks.

Trip Dreaming

The first part of planning a trip begins when we start to dream about different travel destination possibilities. Such dreaming, as we have noted, can be quite fun and can be a very pleasurable part of the anticipation process. We have to be careful, however, that our dreams reflect what we ourselves really want from our trips and are not based on unrealistic notions of what others have had or done. Dreams about travel can be fueled by multiple sources these days. For instance, we might look at pictures on Instagram or Facebook sent by a friend about the friend’s vacation to some Hawaiian beach resort and immediately want to go to this resort ourselves. Or we might see a television ad featuring a large cruise line that offers passengers seemingly wonderful package tours to exotic locations and then decide that we must be on that cruise. The difficulty is that these images are carefully curated to show everyone and every location in the best possible light. Our friends, for instance, may happily provide us with beautifully posed images of themselves having a great time at a Hawaiian luau; they do not as readily, though, show pictures of themselves standing in a long line at the lost luggage counter at the airport. Thus, while exposure to inspiring images can help give us some ideas of different trip options, seeing only descriptions of the apparent endlessly incredible travel experiences of others can also distort our thinking. In this chapter we will talk more about how and why this is the case and then explore what those in the travel industry might do to help us consider our travel goals in ways that are more apt to lead to agreeable trip outcomes.

Maximizing Tendencies

One factor that often adds to our lack of satisfaction during traveling is the false idea that everything on our trip must be perfect (as it seems to have been for other people) or it will all be worthless. Let’s consider this more.

When we spend lots of money and energy planning a dream trip, it seems straightforward enough that we would want everything about our trip to be the best possible. We want to eat the best food, to have a chance to gaze at the best sites, to take the best tours, and to participate in the most exciting and best adventures. This aim for perfection in everything is known as maximizing (Cheek and Schwartz 2016); and at first glance, it might seem like a good and worthwhile goal for all travelers to have. After all, why shouldn’t everyone desire the highest standards in everything? Don’t we all deserve it? Isn’t this, at least, a good aspirational goal to hold? While the truth of this might seem intuitively obvious, we will see that constantly seeking out only the best can have some significant downsides (Iyengar, Wells and Schwartz 2006).

First, pursuing the best in everything on our future trips is probably an impossible goal to achieve. And even if we think we have reached perfection in our planning, the reality of our actual trips often turns out to be less perfect than the flawlessness of our plans. This is like the New Years’ Eve conundrum. We often think so unrealistically about how wonderful New Year’s Eve celebrations will be that the events of the evening itself turn out to be a severe letdown for many. Some of us remember the year 2000 millennium parties where the hype was simply too much for most people to live up to. Talking too much about or expecting perfection inevitably fuels anticlimax!

Another downside of searching for trip perfection is that seeking the perfect trip can evolve into a search not for what is best for us, but rather what is better than what others have. For instance, we may have reserved a beautiful room for our cruise, but then find much to our chagrin that our colleague at work, who took the same cruise the previous year, had secured an even better room for the same price. When best becomes better than, this kind of knowledge can lead to significant unhappiness.

Finally, when we desire perfection, we may begin to want the best of everything on our vacations not because we think we would especially enjoy this or that, but because by getting the best, we would prove to ourselves and others how smart and effective we are as people (Hughes and Scholer 2017). This becomes perilous because it basically puts our self-worth on the line with every trip we take, something that we all want to avoid.

As we think about all of the above, it is interesting to note that research has shown (Iyengar and Lepper 2000) that if we are maximizers we often do achieve objectively better outcomes than non-maximizers, but we end up being less satisfied with our results because we are always looking for something even greater around the corner. Needless to say, this makes efforts to find happiness from the pursuit of perfection doubly difficult to achieve.

Imposed Time Pressures

At the same time that we may feel compelled to search for the very best in everything, we also may feel pressure in our very fast-paced worlds to constantly do and achieve more and more. Good trips can then become defined as ones that are frenetically busy. This conceptualization of successful trips often leads to later travel dissatisfaction because it produces situations where we begin to simply check off sites and places we visited rather than taking the time to really see and appreciate them (Bryant and Veroff 2007). Unfortunately, if we succumb to these sorts of do-itall pressures, we end up feeling simply tired rather than nourished and refreshed by our trips.

Facilitating Realistic Trip Planning

Maximizing tendencies and imposed time demands can, therefore, greatly interfere with our ability to plan satisfying trips. Because these biases and tendencies often play out under the radar of individual awareness, we are usually not conscious of why we think we must take this or that sort of trip, or why we are unexpectedly disappointed later when some of the actual trip experiences fail to live up to our initial dreams.

Helping us set more realistic trip goals is where a good travel planner can come into the picture. Travel planners can aid us in putting together optimal trip agendas by listening to the kinds of experiences we want to have. They can ascertain our interests and preferences for things like methods of travel and/or room accommodations and tastes in dining and then put together very personalized itineraries for us. They can also assist us in selecting destination sites (Hague 2016). To do all of this well, however, a travel planner has to be able to listen very carefully not only to what we say we want to experience, but also to why having these particular kinds of experiences seems so important and necessary to us. By listening for the why underneath the what, a planner can assess if we are unwittingly placing pressures on ourselves that could undermine the success of our trip experiences. Do we, for instance, seem to be seeking some kind of trip perfection that doesn’t really exist? Have we obtained ideas about what we should do and experience from others who are conveying very unrealistic portrayals of travel bliss to us? Do we want to do too much on our trips, forgetting that transaction costs, including not only money but also time and energy and, perhaps, discomfort, must be dealt with as we navigate from one site to another? More generally, do we expect to experience continual joy while traveling without remembering all of the hassles and irritations that are also part of the travel process?

All of this means travel planners must explore not merely our desires and interests, but, in addition, talk with us about our energy level, need for downtime, tolerance for discomfort, and degree of patience we are likely to have if/when things go awry. Discussion of such topics would considerably aid us in identifying realistic travel motives and goals, and in this way satisfactory trips that are also doable and achievable would be more likely to emerge.

Travel providers could additionally show us possible travel venues from a variety of sources that go beyond paper brochures or conventional photos of travel sites. For instance, we could be shown reviews and even video montages from hotel websites that depict the kinds of experiences different guests have actually had during their stays at these hotels. Whatever they were, having a chance to be privy to these sorts of depictions could give us some valuable data about the types of encounters that might realistically await us in different sorts of travel environments. We could then use this to make more informed assessments about where we would be apt to feel most or least comfortable, or about what types of activities we might enjoy or not enjoy. Besides assisting us in making good general travel choices, with our permission, such information on our preferences could also be shared with travel professionals at our chosen travel destinations. This would allow them to arrange advance bookings for us for activities during our stays that are likely to be particularly suited to us. All of this would contribute to the chances that our chosen travel goals would lead to positive trip outcomes and not to disappointed dreams.

Questions for Discussion

In order to think more about how to set workable and realistic travel expectations and goals and about the factors that can sometimes impede this, please answer the following questions. Draw on both your personal experience and/or any experiences you have had in the travel industry as you do this.

1. Picture in your mind someone you would define as a maximizer (either yourself or someone you know). How does this tendency affect how you or this other person like(s) to prepare for trips? Explain.

2. Now think of someone (either yourself or someone you know) who seems to want to do everything in a hurry and to cram more and more activities into every moment. Again, consider how this tendency affects your own or this other person’s travel preparation habits. Explain.

3. Ponder now some of the suggestions given in this chapter on how travel planners might work with those of us who have these maximizing or want-to-do-it-all tendencies. Did any of these suggestions stand out to you or seem particularly helpful? If yes, describe. Are there other ways that were not discussed in this chapter that travel planners might work with us to promote realistic travel expectations? Explain.

4. In your opinion, where do most of us get our ideas about desired travel destinations these days? Do you think the sources that we tend to use have changed from what they were in the past, and if yes, what are the negative and positive effects of such changes?

5. Finally, what one thing, in your opinion, contributes most to people having unrealistic expectations about travel? Explain.

Notes

 

 

 

 

 

 

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