Tuesday 2 January 2007

Hope for Sanity yet

You may not know this, but today is one of the busiest days of the year for booking a holiday. A cure for the Post-Winterval blues no doubt. The Holiday companies are also engaged in a price war and are offering some good discounts.

Also last week saw a timely announcement by Thomson (owned by TUI AG) of an end to a silly business practice. They announced that they are to end the fuel surcharge on holidays. This at last makes them compliant with EU regulations which state that prices advertised should be the whole price and not just a headline.

No other Tour Operator does this, and most of the major airlines too add fuel surcharges as an extra. This always makes it hard to compare prices, especially online at places like cheapflights or dealchecker.

So I applaud Thomson's for being the first to make this move. However, what is given with one hand is often taken away by the other. The new trick, by First Choice this time, is to reduce the baggage allowance to 15 kilo's. Your average holiday bag weighs in at 19 -20. Now you have to pay the £10 for the 'extra' luggage. So this is just a surcharge by another name.

If you are looking to book somewhere soon, take all these factors into mind as they can make £30 -50 difference per person and so make a big impact on your holiday spend.

For once too I want the companies to follow EU regulations, you don't get surcharges at Petrol stations or on your sprouts at a supermarket; there is no need for this sleight of hand by Tour Operators and Airlines either. Ryan Air of course is the leader in this as per usual.

5 comments:

Gracchi said...

Great post- I agree with you completely the practise of hidden charging is disgusting.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

It always used to amaze me, in Britain, how the ads for holidays would come on almost straight after Xmas lunch. It was almost like, "That's over - you must have had enough of the family by now!" I am horrified by the idea of baggage allowances being reduced; I have to carry all my lippy and stuff, you see, so I won't be flying with airlines who do this! Buon Anno.

Anonymous said...

I've got 10,000 airmiles to use up, but you still end up paying a good bit of cash too. I really want a freebie out of this, but there is no such thing as a freebie, regardless of the airmiles.

Baggage allowance worries me too as I am one of those who has to have a bag and shoes to match every outfit, and two outfits a day, etc.

Happy New Year.

Anonymous said...

Hi there, Sainty from dealchecker.co.uk here. Thanks for the mention and yes, it is a big pain for us and for consumers. One way we tackle it is to publish a handpicked selection of deals (dealchecker's Real Deals) where we make sure we highlight all the extra costs. But of course you can only do so much by hand. Things have actually got worse in recent times with some airlines now charging for hold baggage or reducing the included allowance and then charging for extra. Then of course there's the charge for the meals and now, the one that pisses me off the most, the 'all sitting together' charge! Where do these guys get off?

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