You would hope, after 2 years of a pandemic, when not nearly as many people traveled, there couldn’t BE a travel company that no one hated, right? Everyone would be THRILLED to have customers and clients and guests and passengers again, so everything would run perfectly, and everything in the travel world would be amazingly fantastic, right?
Not surprisingly, you would have hoped wrong.
An online site called 24/7 Wall Street has been listing the most hated companies in the U.S. since around 2011. They’re from all different types of business, but those that were travel-related ones are always the one I hone in on. Each year’s list is actually the results of the previous year, so those listed for 2011 were the most hated in 2010, and so on.
Here are the travel-related winners (well, really losers) for each year:
- 2011: United Airlines, American Airlines
- 2012: American Airlines
- 2013: American Airlines
- 2014: No travel-related companies that year!
- 2015: Spirit Airlines, Uber
- 2016: Spirit Airlines, SeaWorld
- 2017: Spirit Airlines
- 2018: Click here to see some names well known to this list AND a brand new contender
- 2019: Click here. Guess who made the list AGAIN? Plus a hotel brand!
- 2020: Click here. That year’s list was a little different, to say the least!
- 2021: Click here. They changed things up last year, and instead of listing the 25 “most hated” companies, they made a list of the “least admired.” Meh…semantics.
In 2022, they changed things up yet again. They went back to “the most hated” (yay!) but instead of having 25 on the list, they cut it down to just 10.
So of the 25 10 most hated companies in the U.S., only one of them was even remotely travel-related. Others included TV channels, pharmaceuticals, social media, student loan companies, stock trading companies, blood testing and real estate development.
Here the list, in numerical order, starting from the 9th most hated, and going down to first:
9. CNN & Fox News (tie)
8. Johnson & Johnson
7. Meta Platforms, Inc. (read: Facebook)
6. Navient Corp.
5. Netflix
4. Robinhood Markets, Inc.
3. Theranos
2. The Trump Organization
1. Twitter
The only travel-related company on the list? Boeing. It came in at #10. From 24/7 Wall St.:
Two 737 MAX jets crashed in 2018 and 2019, resulting in the deaths of 346 passengers and crew. The accidents were the result of a faulty sensor, which Boeing admitted it knew about a year before the crashes. Though years have passed, Boeing has a long way to go to restore its reputation and regain public trust – and it is now facing additional headwinds.
The company halted deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner following revelations that parts of the aircraft did not meet FAA standards. Some industry experts claim the company’s systems and culture are in need of an overhaul to address an apparent lack of checks and balances and transparency. The company is expected to continue to lose ground to European competitor, Airbus, in 2022.
Boeing made the 2021 “least admired” list, as well – it was #5, due to the ongoing 737 Max saga.
Click here for more descriptions of the entire list.
Feature Photo: pxhere
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