Memo to hotels and airlines – this is why women don’t take vacations quite as often as you’d like. Here are our top 30 travel complaints…

1. Dear airlines – single people really hate being stuck between two strangers. You know those groups of four seats in the middle aisle that your accountants dreamed up? Sooner or later we find ourselves seated there. With a man who spreads his legs so wide that his knee ends up in your groin.  Or a woman who takes her trainers off and farts from London to Dubai. Reserve these for families (or group sex participants) or just forget it. And that’s our first complaint.
2. How much do we hate the fluorescent bathroom lighting in hotels? Yes! It’s the ugly mirror! You too can gain five pounds and a complexion like a corpse, just by looking. The pain of the experience is only rivalled by that well known game, Hunt The Hotel Light Switches.
3. Lazy flight attendants drive us crazy. The flight is full. There is no space in the overhead lockers near your seat. So what do the airline staff do? Stand very still and look at their fingernails.
4. Flight attendants with access to a Star Trek transporter seem to work for every airline. You can press the call button all you like, but you’ll find these mysterious creatures beamed up, right after take-off.
5. You know when you have a headache from sleep deprivation, and your back and head feel every fumble and kick from the passenger behind you? That. Especially if the passenger is six years old with righteous parents. And please, can we just stop poking and jabbing at the damn video screen? We agree with comedian Julia Morris who has berated Qantas about this on our Twitter feed – On behalf of our headaches, we’d like to say ‘People! It’s touch-activated!’
6. First class and business class divisions are behind a whole lot of problems on planes. Can we just rip all the seats up and give everyone on the entire plane more damn space? Didn’t the class system end during the French Revolution?
7. What makes us not want to shop Duty Free? The Duty Free police. No, you may not try on the perfume samples without being harassed. Three times.
8. We groan when we see powdered milk sachets in hotel rooms. How cheap is a cheap hotel? Truly cheap, when they imagine that you want dried stuff in your tea. You may as well forget supplying the bag, because we’re not going to have it with hydrogenated palm kernel oil. And how about those little plastic milk thimbles? The kind that are so little, that you always run out of milk after two cups?
9. Commando hotel maids drive us crazy. That ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on your hotel door? Ladies, it does not mean ‘Please Burst In, While I’m Walking Round Naked Eating Pringles.’
10. Oh, we loathe those free plastic bags at airport security. The bags that don’t seal so that your anti-dandruff shampoo falls out on the floor, along with your condoms. Those.
11. ‘Switch off all electronic equipment.’ Why? Why switch off our miniscule battery-powered iPod? Why?
12. And another thing. Hotel room plastic key cards.  It’s a gamble every time you stick them in the lock. Will it be the red light today, or the green? And then we use them to turn on the lights, forget them, and have to queue at reception for a spare. With a hangover. At 3.00am.
13. The great towel shortage. Women really hate this one. Guys, we use two towels at home. A big one, for us, and a smaller one, to wrap our hair in a turban. So why do we only get one, when we travel? Sized for Barbie?  Stop being so cheap!
14. Tip humiliation. The hovering bellhop who is waiting for his money when you only just landed and only possess large currency – and the expectant airport porter who doesn’t understand that you don’t have any local currency left.
15. Have you ever boarded a flight with Captain Drone? He wanted to be a DJ at school but ended up being a pilot instead. Guys, when we want to hear a fascinating monologue about tail wind, we’ll ask for it.
16. Devil children on flights are everybody’s pet hate. These creatures are the spawn of Satan, without volume control. You can jam those 32 decibel earplugs in as far as you like, but you’ll still hear their hellish screams across both aisles, until dawn. If only airline was like Scoot and offered peaceful, adults-only zones for an extra £10/$18.
17. There is nothing like the unique torture of airport security when you’re rushing for your flight. You too can be made to feel like Osama Bin Laden when you’re only trying to have a vacation. And since when was it okay for a strange woman in a uniform to pat your nipples at 5.00am?
18. The beep-beep trucks blocking your way in an airport when you’re running for a flight. We wouldn’t care if we were on them, but we never are. Beep! Beep! And speaking of trucks, where is our lost luggage? Should we pay for a sponsored Twitter campaign like this poor British Airways customer? Is that the only way to get results these days?
19. We really hate passengers who think your seat is their party. Hey! Let’s all lean on the back of your seat and conduct a loud, semi-drunken conversation with our friends at the local time equivalent of 2.00am!
20. We all seem to take out travel insurance which costs one quarter of our air fare –but with no guarantees our claims will ever actually be successful. Has anyone ever actually read  those pages of tiny fine print?
21. When things go wrong on vacation (and they do, all the time) the pain of cancelling flight and hotel bookings is doubled by the fact that we are still forced to pay for a trip we never took and a bed we never used. Nothing else in life is this non-refundable.
22. Did we mention the pilot who warns you about air turbulence that never actually happens? We are turned away on our trip to the toilet by white-faced flight attendants.  Panicking, we return to our seats. We fasten our seat belts tightly. We wait, in terrified anticipation. Then…nothing. Not a damn thing.
23. Please explain the logic to us, of charging eye-watering penalties at check-in when our carry-on case goes over the limit. Especially when we weigh 5kg less than the fat guy in the extra-large tracksuit behind us.
24. Oh, the pointless irritation of the flimsy plastic hotel shower-cap. You know, the kind that balloons around the back of your head and actually fills up with water. It’s right up there with…
25. The hotel kettle which is always the wrong size and shape to fill from the bathroom tap. Does nobody test these things to see if they’ll actually wedge into a sink, without a) losing half the water from the kettle and b) flooding the bathroom floor?
26. We really, really don’t like rip-off broadband fees in hotel rooms. Look, we have wi-fi at home too. We know how much this stuff costs.
27. Late check-in and early check-out drive travellers crazy. When a normal business day starts at 9.00am, why do hotels refuse to let you into your room until 2.00pm? And for the weary, jet-lagged traveller, there is no greater torture than being thrown out before 10.00am.
28. Demented fellow passengers. When the plane skids onto the runway and the seatbelt sign is still on, STAY IN YOUR SEAT. And if we have our headphones on, DO NOT TAP US ON THE ARM because you suddenly feel needy and want a long conversation.
29. Four hangers in the hotel closet. Gee, thanks. It’s almost as uplifting as the row of security hangers. You know. The kind with little spokes that are fixed to the rail, to prevent those terrifying armed hotel hanger heists.
30. Could we possibly have the coffeemaker taken out of the hotel bathroom and keep one bodily function separate from another? Thank you.

Special thanks to Vicki Arkoff, Deborah Dickson-Smith at Little Nomads (littlenomads.com), Lee Tulloch (Mr and Mrs Amos), Tamara Pitelen, Jane Pirkis, Mark Ferguson and Karen Moline (karenmoline.com). Tell us your travel turn-offs on Twitter @holidaygoddess. Incomprehensible hotel taps? Train companies that won’t accept your passport and birth certificate as ID when your credit card gets stolen? We hear you. Tweet us and we’ll add your travel issues to our list.

Image Wikimedia Commons – John Atherton, 1970’s Pan-Am Flight Attendant.