CHAPTER 9

Mitigating Comparison Tendencies

(or I Was Happy Here Until I Saw Your Room!)

Comparison doesn’t strengthen anything other than your own insecurities.

—AC Dyson

Chapter Preview

In this chapter, the damaging effects that negative comparisons to others can have on travel satisfaction are discussed. These types of comparisons are often so harmful because they can generate in us deep feelings of unfairness. The dynamics of this are explored, and communication strategies those in the travel industry can use to help us feel less of a need to make damaging comparisons are examined.

The Insidiousness of Comparisons

In addition to physical hassles, traveling can also involve a lot of negative social comparisons. This is because traveling takes us out of our normal routines and predictable environments and makes us prone to look to others to give ourselves a benchmark of what we should have and do (Nawijn, Marchand, Veenhoven and Vingerhoets 2010). These comparisons with others, as we discussed previously, can sometimes occur in the pre-trip traveling stage. However, they can also occur during our actual trips and have several detrimental effects (Collins 1996). To give a few examples, let’s imagine that we just checked onto a cruise ship, and we perceive that others are getting better deals than we are in terms of things like room sizes or amenity packages. Or maybe we observe that our service at a restaurant seems to be slower than that given to people sitting at the table next to us, or that our glasses of wine are smaller than theirs. These types of comparisons can go on and on and can be insidious and deflating. They occur most frequently when our notions of what we think we deserve are unclear, and when we are not sure of what is our due. Consequently, we look to others for information about what is the norm. Interestingly, psychological research has shown that the more we compare our lot with others, especially if the comparisons are negative, the unhappier and more miserable we become (Wheeler and Miyake 1992). This is the case because when we continually compare ourselves with someone else, we basically allow what happens to them and not to us to determine our own happiness.

As a personal example related to this, I recall a situation when my husband and I stayed some years ago in a small hotel in Europe. Initially, when we viewed our assigned room at this hotel, we were quite pleased with it. Even though the walls were a bit dingy and the rug a bit worn, the room seemed quiet and comfortable and a good place to relax and settle in. We had an excellent night’s sleep and woke up the next morning hungry and ready to go to breakfast. Unfortunately, though, as we were walking to the breakfast area, we noticed that the door to the room next to us happened to be left open, and we decided to peek inside. What we saw when we did this was a beautifully appointed space. Walls were freshly painted, drapes appeared new, and the floor was highly polished. Suddenly our comfortable room seemed rather shabby. We were confused at this point, so we went down to the hotel lobby to ask the desk clerk if the nicely decorated rooms were much more expensive than our room, but he said there was no price difference. He also rather dismissively explained that the hotel was in the process of renovating all of its rooms and that only about half of them had been finished. Then when we requested to be moved to a nice room, he curtly informed us that all of the nice rooms were already booked so such a switch was impossible! We, of course, became very upset, and this incident turned what had started out as a very pleasant experience at this hotel into something we fumed about for a long time. The word we used most often to describe our situation was unfair. Let’s think more about this concept of unfairness, and why it is so important to us.

Comparisons and Unfairness Assessments

Perceptions of unfair outcomes are powerful igniters of dissatisfaction, and they occur most often when we think that we did not get what we rightly earned in some situation (Walster, Walster and Bersheid 1978). For instance, if we paid what we thought was a great amount of money for a very nice hotel room and then were given only a rather plain room overlooking the back alley, we would be more upset than if we paid a small amount of money for this same room. This is the case because in the former situation, we would have felt that we deserved a good room more than in the latter case.

We also can perceive other kinds of situations to be unfair that have less to do with the specific outcomes we receive. For instance, we can define situations to be unfair if we think we have not been treated with the degree of dignity and respect that we feel is our due (Mikula, Petri and Tanzer 1990). As an example of this, imagine a case in which we were asking a question to a hotel clerk about directions to a place we wanted to visit only to have the clerk answer us very briefly and dismissively and then move on to dealing with someone else. Even though in the scheme of things this is a small event, interactions of this kind can trigger powerful emotions because they can make us feel discounted and unimportant.

To think about this more, we can go back to the incident in the small hotel in Europe that was described earlier where my husband and I were given a shabby room compared to others, and then were treated rudely by the hotel clerk when we later asked about this. This incident, as I noted, was very upsetting to us. As my husband and I considered why it was so disturbing, we realized that it would have been helpful if, when we were initially checking in, we had been told that some of the rooms were updated and some were not, and that only non-updated rooms were available now. At that point, we could have made a decision whether to stay in that hotel or not. It would also have been helpful if it was explained to us how decisions about being given the updated rooms had been made in the first place. Maybe, for instance, people had to make reservations for these nice rooms considerably in advance, or maybe they were being saved for longtime repeat patrons of the hotel who were enrolled in different kinds of loyalty programs. It would not have mattered so much what the rules were, just that the rules were explicitly described to us, and that we could make decisions about what to do in light of those rules.

In the preceding example, openness and directness of communication were sorely lacking, and this led to very bad feelings on the part of my husband and me. When openness and directness of communication are present, by contrast, feelings of resentment are reduced because the vague misunderstandings that often fuel irritation are eliminated. This is key. It is uncertainty and lack of clarity that tend to lead us to the uninformed comparisons that can spark anger (Collins 1996). Open and direct communication is accessible, responsive, and transparent (CSPonline 2016). This means that communication is enhanced when we can contact our travel providers easily when we have needs, when the providers are able to quickly respond to our requests and questions, and when reasons for making different types of travel decisions for us are made clear. Let’s talk about this more and look at how people in the travel industry can facilitate this kind of communication.

Enhancing Good Communication Patterns

One change that has been evident in travel today, as well as in society as a whole, is the increasing use of technology to communicate with others. Because of all the advances in such technology, travel providers have more and more opportunities to engage in accessible and open communication with us than ever before (Shashou 2017).

As an example of this, imagine that we were staying in some typical hotel where we had a question about hotel policies or the use of amenities, and we wanted to talk with someone on the hotel staff about our concerns. Perhaps, for instance, we saw other hotel guests heading out on bicycle rides or paddling in kayaks on a lake behind the hotel, and we wondered why we were not told about these possibilities. Or maybe we called down to the hotel restaurant at 5 PM to make a reservation for dinner that evening only to be told that we needed to make reservations by 4 PM in order to get a table. Whatever our particular concerns, it would be helpful if we could have them addressed quickly before confusion and irritation set in. This is where technology is useful. In addition to trying to seek out chances for in-person interactions with hotel employees when we have questions, at many hotels these days we can also consult with staff remotely through the use of apps available on our smartphones or iPads or other similar devices (Shashou 2017). This adds efficiency to the process of getting answers back to us. Some hotels additionally offer access to things like virtual concierges online where frequently asked questions are responded to (What You Should Know 2019), or in-room kiosks where we can make service requests on our own schedules and at our own convenience without leaving our rooms or picking up a phone (Adler and Gordon 2013). Visual information regarding hotel amenities such as pictures of the hotel restaurant’s interior or gym facilities is also increasingly being made available via different types of media to give us better ideas of options from which we can choose. Many hotels, in fact, have large touch screens in place in lobbies (Adler and Gordon 2013) that we can use for this purpose. Other establishments utilize things like photo framing applications to depict what is going on in different places in the hotel at any given moment (Chiasson 2010). For example, current events and gatherings at the hotel might be highlighted, restaurant specials noted and pictured, loyalty programs explained, or where to purchase ongoing tour tickets described. Access to these types of communication sources would enable us to make more informed decisions about how to best structure and use our time. This would give us a greater sense that we are in control of the communication process, a feeling that is very empowering.

The above represents just a few of the possibilities that new technology offers us to enhance our quality of communication in travel situations. Of course, direct in-person consultations with travel staff might be the preferred mode of interaction for some of us, and that could be used when appropriate. The important idea is that we should be given expanded options for the use of multiple and easily accessible communication channels so that our questions and requests can be quickly addressed. This would cause us to rely less on uninformed or misleading sources to gather information, an outcome that can generate the resentment and dissatisfaction that we all want to avoid!

Questions for Discussion

Please work with the following questions to think more about the impact that negative comparisons with others can have on travel satisfaction and how this could be best dealt with by those in the travel industry. Draw on your own personal experience and/or your experiences in some aspect of the travel industry as you do this.

1. Think of a time on a trip that you took when you compared yourself to some other traveler in some way and ended up feeling less satisfied with your own situation as a result. Describe the scene and try to analyze it in terms of the ideas about comparisons presented in this chapter.

2. Now consider a time on a vacation when you were not just upset by some incident that occurred, but you also thought you had been treated very unfairly by someone in the hospitality industry. Again, describe the scene and try to frame your answer by using the concepts about unfairness and deservingness presented in this chapter.

3. Turn now to an examination of the idea of the importance of treating others with respect. How would you define the concept of respect? Give an example of how a person in the travel industry might treat you: (1) disrespectfully, and then (2) respectfully. What is the key difference?

4. Good communication includes the qualities of openness, transparency, and accessibility. Give a description of how a hotel check-in clerk would act if he or she either valued or did not value these three aspects of good communication. Which strategies offered in this chapter to enhance these dimensions of communication were most interesting to you? Explain.

5. Using different forms of technology to enhance our access to information and advice during our travels was also considered in this chapter. Have you ever had any personal experience with this? Do you think technology will have a positive impact on the ways we interact with people in the hospitality industry? Explain.

Notes

 

 

 

 

 

 

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