A banker acquaintance sent me a curt email. “So, I assume the freebies will dry up. How on earth will you survive?” he said, with discernible glee. “Not at all,” I told him, more in hope than anything else. He was asking because I had just stood down as travel editor of a national newspaper after more than 17 years in the job. Call me over-sensitive but his email irritated me. Consequently, 24 hours later (always a wise cooling off period), I sent one back along the lines of: “I assume your annual bonus has rolled in as usual.” To which I received no response.

I happen to know Mr Banker-Acquaintance is normally handed a six-figure annual bonus for playing around with other people’s money and so I found it rich (pun intended) of him to draw attention to my good fortune at being offered various freebies – or “complimentary hospitality”, as we like to call it in the trade – over those last 17 years.

Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t get excited about Sir Keir Starmer being hosted in a box to watch Arsenal at the Emirates stadium. And although I have a long list of grievances about Rachel Reeves and hold her responsible for a host of bad decisions, her accepting complimentary tickets to a Sabrina Carpenter concert in a corporate box at the O2 Arena is not one of them.

Most jobs have perks. If you drive a train or work on the London Underground, your commute is paid for and you get 75 per cent off all rail travel in the UK, plus a reduction for family members. If you’re an employee of Harrods (as I was in the early 70s when assigned to the fruit and vegetable department on £15.20 a week after tax, plus free avocados), you get various discounts, including 25 per cent off food and up to 33 per cent for Harrods own-brand products.

If you work for an airline and are prepared to travel on a stand-by ticket, your flight costs nothing, and there are good reductions even when flying on some rival carriers. Cabin crew get discounts for family members, too.

Of course, we all applauded, censoriously, when The Independent in its early days made a point of not accepting freebies from travel companies, a policy that was soon aborted when reimbursing writers for their plane tickets, accommodation, and food and drink became financially unrealistic.

The same policy came to grief once the bean counters began to assert themselves at Condé Nast Traveller, although as late as October 2011, 14 years after the magazine launched in Britain, the following statement appeared on its website: “Travel sites often accept free or discounted trips and accommodations – not to mention gifts, products, and even outright payment – in exchange for editorial coverage. Condé Nast Traveler [a different spelling for the Americans] never has and never will.

“The magazine’s editors and reporters pay the same prices you do and travel unannounced, except in rare cases where it’s impossible to do so. This ensures that we experience travel the way you do – with no special recognition, treatment, or obligations – and are free to report our findings honestly, with no conflict of interest or ulterior motives.” This was in line with the decree from on high in the form of Harold Evans, who launched Condé Nast Traveler in America in 1986, with the mantra Trust in Travel, whereby writers were strictly forbidden from accepting free travel, meals or rooms from hotels, airlines and tour operators.

This is all very well if those writers are on staff and the magazine has the resources to pay the bills, but this is seldom the case and certainly not nowadays when it comes to Condé Nast Traveller. Today, the press trip is alive and well, and, in a calculated effort to appear transparent, it’s not unusual to see the travel facts at the end of the story saying something like “Sandra was a guest of…”

The brutal truth is that even if a freelance travel journalist spends most of his or her time on press trips, it is still almost impossible to make a decent living. “You have to accept that it’s a lifestyle choice and beats going to an office every day,” says one such travel writer. “But it doesn’t do much for your mortgage repayments and pension.”

Even so, high-minded editors and some pompous journalists can still be disparaging about the acceptance of freebies, which in turn casts doubt on the integrity of this beleaguered tribe, of which I still consider myself a member. Frankly, I have seldom felt compromised when returning from a less than agreeable trip and with the bubbly PR anxiously expecting a lyrical piece about how wonderful it has all been.

My strategy on these unfortunate but rare occasions is to be clear with the PR. A conversation along these lines might ensue: “I’m sorry to say it was all a disaster. The room looked out on to a concrete wall and the tour guide’s English was worse than my Spanish. I either write honestly about my experience or we quietly ditch the whole thing and forget it ever happened.”

Understandably, ditching the whole thing and forgetting it ever happened is normally the agreed option in these circumstances, leaving the PR in a difficult position as she or he will have to explain the situation to the client. Not an easy chat.

Writers pretend BBC Travel features are not freebies

There’s no point getting on one’s high horse about journalists accepting freebies – especially when it relates to travel journalists. As one seasoned writer put it: “Outlets like the BBC Travel magazine drive me crazy. I was once commissioned to write a feature about a particular place but then I was told they could not take it, because the trip had been comped. What makes it worse is that all the journos that I know of who write for the BBC Travel magazine pretend they are not comped. One even attended a press trip I was on, and admitted she was writing for the BBC magazine.”

Readers know what’s going on. They are adept at reading between the gushing lines and just want to know if somewhere is worth a trip and represents decent value for money. A lot of readers look first at the price of a holiday in the fact box before ploughing through the copy. Only the Daily Mail’s Inspector Calls hotel reviews column refuses to take free-of-charge

hospitality. Perhaps it’s the only paper that can afford this luxury and there’s no question that it serves the reader well. If the review is positive, the reader is alerted and may well book; if negative, the reader might be amused to discover why it was so awful and will never book.

I have no doubt that my banker acquaintance takes his fair share of freebies and that, in monetary terms, they surpass the odd free night in a hotel offered to journalists. He might well be invited to the quarter-finals at Wimbledon or a Six Nations rugby match at Twickenham or the opera at pricey Glyndebourne. I have no quibble with this. Perks make the world go round. How pleasing it is to be offered a free coffee from time to time at my local Pret; how encouraging when a bus driver lets you ride for free because, genuinely, you have forgotten your Oyster card.

Mind you, there have been one or two occasions when my acceptance of hospitality has not always filtered down to all members of staff. I recall a three-night stay at a plush hotel in the Maldives with overwater villas, where the PR made clear that a spa treatment would be thrown in, along with full board and all non-alcoholic drinks. But when it came to checking out, I was confronted with a bill for some $3,500 – and the boat taking us and some other guests back to the airport for the flight home was ready to leave.

“I think there might be some mistake,” I said to the receptionist. “May I speak to the general manager?” “He’s in New York,” she said.

Then I heard the man driving the boat shout: “We have to leave now, sir!”

“Please call him in New York,” I said to the receptionist in a pleading sort of way.

Which, kindly, she did. To my shame, it was the middle of the night in the Big Apple but the groggy GM took the call and within minutes my original bill was torn up and replaced with one infinitely smaller.

“Travel journalism simply could not survive without financial assistance from airlines, hotels and tour operators,” says Teresa Levonian Cole, who has covered the luxury travel for 30 years. “And if there are glitches, what counts for me is the way the problem is handled. If with courtesy and there’s a prompt resolution, then it could even turn out as a plus.

“If met with rudeness and indifference, then I have no qualms about saying exactly what I think. Provided it is fair comment, the hosts tend to be grateful for the feedback. But, if possible, I always give the hotel the chance to put things right first.”

The assumption that a journalist’s objectivity is compromised by accepting a freebie is insulting. Travel editors use journalists whose opinions they trust – and, in turn, one hopes that the reader trusts the journalist to get it right and really isn’t bothered by whoever is paying the bill.