Thursday 10 July 2008

Can a fake travel business get you an upgrade?


I've started an experiment. It was inspired by an experience I had a few years ago. My wife and I were on our honeymoon when we noticed that a few of the guests were being fawned over to a much greater extent than any of the rest of us. I learned that this was down to one of them being a travel agent and that such treatment is par for the course when she goes traveling. This didn't seem fair, but at the same time, made perfect sense.

Thinking about this, last night I registered a domain: romantic-vacations.co.uk
Next, I built an astonishingly cheezy website and created a few email accounts tied to the domain. This all took about fifteen minutes and cost £12.99

The wife and I are going to use these email addresses (with the website in the signature) to book hotels on our next few trips. Will we be treated any differently? I have visions of complementary upgrades and sycophantic grovelling. More likely, the canny hoteliers will see through the ruse and give us the room by the ice machine that charlatans such as we must surely deserve.

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