This is the season to travel – and to spend a lot on traveling too. Despite increasing baggage fees and mind-boggling ticket prices, U.S. consumers claim they would pay travel companies, from car rental services to airlines, more money if they would make their experiences simpler.

According to the second annual Global Brand Simplicity Index from strategic branding firm Siegel+Gale, U.S. consumers would pay nearly four percent more – which can total millions – than what they already pay for travel if the companies in this industry would provide easier to use and understand services and communications.  Overall the travel industry ranked as one of the most complex, along with insurance, utilities and telecommunications.    
 
Here are a few more findings about travel brands you may find interesting:
Consumers would pay the following premiums for each sector of travel:
- Air: $854 million
- Train: $153 million
- Hotels: $440 million
- Car rental: $101 million
- Booking: $106 million

The top brands in the travel category are all hotels. Hilton is the first of which to appear on the list at #21 followed by Comfort Inn at #25, Days Inn at #32, Holiday Inn at #48 and Marriott at #65.

Travel booking brands came in as the #12 simplest industry (out of 25 industries) after hotels (which were #7). Orbitz made the first appearance for the category at #68 followed by Priceline.com at #75 and KAYAK at #93.

Not surprisingly, train, car and air travel followed with worse rankings including Amtrak at #90, Delta Air Lines at #107 and Enterprise at #115 to name a few. The survey included 125 brands ranking from simplest to most complex.

On the global rankings travel brands fared about as badly as they did in the U.S. Out of 87 brands the bottom 10 included Budget, Hertz, Enterprise and RyanAir. It’s important to note that Enterprise did poorly on the global list because of its significantly bad ranking in the U.S.