Had a good laugh the other day with a senior member of the travel industry. We were talking about technology and how that has changed the way we travel and indeed the way we live. It seems such a short while ago that getting an email address was a new thing and now the kids don’t even use email. They don’t even use their phones. If you want to speak to your kids you have to text them!
He started talking about telex machines – and said very quickly “Oh well you are far too young to remember them!”. I wish. Who else remembers the telex? You had to type out this cumbersome message and then hope that someone would reply to you in the next week or so. If it was really urgent there was a little bell that you could bang away at – not sure that it was heard on the other side of the world but it felt good, nevertheless.
Look at this baby – even has a rotary dial. There are some adults today who wouldn’t know what to do with this.
Is it just me or does it seem that the world keeps moving faster and faster. It was only yesterday that we used cassette tapes – only to be replaced by cd’s which are now obsolete because we are all on Spotify or Itunes. And how about DVDs? I don’t even have a DVD player any more. I so remember those evenings at the weekend going down to BlockBuster to go and pick a couple of movies to watch. This was our big treat. First the tapes went (BE KIND REWIND) to be replaced by DVD’s and now those are gone – and so is BlockBuster because they didn’t move with the times. They could have been the next Netflix.
So what else is going to go? Well we have already seen boarding passes disappear in favour of digital. I am still old fashioned and prefer my paper boarding pass – but I am sure I will end up changing with the times. Some of the large cruise ships now have robot barmen which do everything from taking your order, mixing your drink and (of course) charging your shipboard account. Will something like this replace flight attendants I wonder. I certainly hope not. A robot might be fine at scanning your boarding pass or even dishing out a packet of nuts but I wouldn’t want to rely on a robot flight attendant in the case of an emergency.
I guess with a flight attendant like this you wouldn’t get too much unruly behaviour!
The Travel Lady's Blog 
I used a Telex machine in the early 80s. Had to take a whole day training course. Fired off the message to our UK branch and next morning hoped there was a reply!! 🤣
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yup, that’s how it was! The good old days 🙂
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those were the days
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As a travel specialist you must remember when you could use a ticket from one airline on another. No hassle! No fees.
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Hmmm can’t say I remember that – unless it was part of a particular alliance like One World or Star Alliance. Fees weren’t such a big thing back in the day before commission caps. Before travel agents were paid 10% on tickets they sold – that’s why there were no fees. Nowadays they don’t pay anything – unless there is some special contract and you get 2% – whoop de do – that’s why travel agents charge fees for booking airline tickets and even then not really worth it! Especially these days with all the cancellations and sked changes. Ooops you got me started! SORRY!
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Do you remember when there were no pre-check in seat reservations and seats were assigned manually by peeling off the seat stickers and putting it onto your paper boarding pass? One plus was that once on an overnight flight, I asked if it was possible for me to get all the 3 or 4 middle seats in a row for me to stretch out. So the nice agent, pencilled X’d out the adjacent seats and said she would not assign them unless absolutely necessary. So I was able to have all the seats and slept relatively comfortably.
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oh man, those were the good old days for sure. Bet you had just as good a sleep as if you had been in first class
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