Parents with unrealistic holiday expectations

[hinkely]

My parents are in their early 70s. They love to be abroad. I like researching travel and trips so usually help them book their holidays. However, it’s starting to stress me out that they have such realistic expectations.

DM works as a dinner lady (retirement job) which means she can’t travel during term time. DF has a decent pension, no mortgage, etc

However they expect to get school holiday time flights for off season prices. They want long haul flights for £400-500 each and if I suggest they do a short hop to Amsterdam and then connect on, they complain it’s too much hassle.

We go around and around using huge lengths of time until finally we find something that they find cheap enough. Anyone else have parents like this?

No, because I'm not indulging that nonsense. They do it themselves, accept the level of help I'm willing to offer, or go through a travel agent.

This

No bent parents (older than yours) wouldn’t be that cheeky, they go to their local travel agency (Hays) who sort everything including crazily expensive insurance due to medical conditions, and the agent prints everything off and drops it off at their house the day before having booked them onto their plane, really brilliant service

Time to send them to Hay’s Travel. ‘Sorry I’m just too busy, but these people are great’.

Pretty much this!
Just leave them to it if it stresses you out so much. It stresses me out enough booking my own holidays and usually tell dh to choose something or go to the travel agent, tell them what I want and my budget and let them crack on so hell would freeze over before I got myself involved in booking someone else’s…

Stop facilitating this, either tell them a long haul trip will cost 4k or whatever or offer to help them book a short haul holiday, that’s if you want to.

No, DM and DMIL, both in their 80s, plan their own holidays and only tell us when they've booked and need pet sitting, plants watering etc.

Stop doing the organising for them and they might realise how unrealistic their expectations are when they see the costs themselves.

Blimey, no, my DP (older than yours) book their own travel.

Did they not use IT in their working lives? I imagine if your mum was a dinner lady before retirement that perhaps she didn’t, what about your dad? I wonder if by previously helping them to book their travel because you enjoyed doing this, you inadvertently stopped them from doing this themselves at a time when they would have picked it up a bit more easily. People I know of this age have no problem booking their own trips.

Maybe they just enjoy the process of finding a holiday. Not sure why you’re so involved.