I wholly agree, certainly don't try to obtain a merchant account for an online travel agency, we were viewed alongside porn and gambling.
On a more recent note though I have been looking for a marketplace merchant solution, Braintree and Amazon flexible payment service are pretty much the only real solutions out there for my needs. Braintree requires I have a US registered company and a US office (I'm working on that part for the application) and Amazon has no plans to extend FPS to the UK (the answer coming direct from the horses mouth at the AWS conference I attended last week).
Is it any wonder with constraints and lack of VC funding in the UK that the country cannot garner growth and has lost it's ability to be a leading entreprenuerial force.