The first 15 travel companies to surcharge customers.

School Travel Service Ltd
Stowaway Travel Ltd
TJM Travel Ltd
Bales Worldwide Ltd
Hargreaves & Nurse Ltd
STG Travel Ltd
UK Holiday Group Ltd
Noble Caledonia Ltd
Palmers Travel Ltd
Solmar Villas
Discover the World Ltd
Good News Holidays Ltd
Golf Holidays Abroad LTD
French Alps 2007/8
Sports Executive Travel Ltd

Two further applications received by ABTA so I am sure this list is to increase.

Darren with stories of the Euro, Crude oil set to rocket to $200 dollars, can you seriously tell me that if you had your own company ,you would not Surcharge? and you call the surcharges unfair. ?Surcharges are there to protect the Operators whose brochures are produced many months before hand and who set there rates when the euro was worth at least 20-30% more than it is now. You haven’t mentioned Darren that When Exchange rates are better than expected that Tour Operators then alter and lower their prices and make refunds.
Tour Operators hate having to surcharge and have held out till the last minute.

@ Lee

I’m a blogger for consumers so I am obviously going to write about the negatives of the surcharges, but the advantage of a blog is that you can get both points of view when travel company owners like yourself comment and put their points forward.

As for refunding customers, it’s not something I have ever heard happening, and I am surprised (very) that it does. I’d like to hear from anyone who has had a refund from a travel company due to currency fluctuations. Hopefully more of will put you points of view across.

I’ll be listening to you tonight on BBC Radio 2.

I think that this is disgusting and I have never received a refun when the currency fluctuations have been in my favour.

ABTA should surely be capping the percentage, not allowing different companies charge different amounts of money.

I would certainly not book with any of the 15 companies mention and I think I will go with Thomas Cook so once again the small company looses out.

I cannot believe that we are expected to pay this surcharge. It is outragious and holidaymakers should simply book a holiday elsewhere.

@ Rohan

Good point about capping the percentage of surcharge. It’ll not happen though because agencies have different levels of revenue, I would suspect

@ Luke

I agree.

The Amount of surcharging is capped , as if the surcharging goes above 10% of the original cost, the clients have the right to cancel their holiday if they so wish. If you are to “rant” about these subjects, then surely the response should be accurate darren.
Unfortunatly no matter how unfair surcharging may be, if you take Diesel Prices that not so long ago we were all moaning about hitting the £1.00 mark, now it’s about £1.26. My Wife calculated on a full tank of Diesel for our car it now costs an extra £80.00. We’re all paying surcharges for everything we buy at present in the supermarkets, imported furniture, fuel,extra taxes etc, it’s the government that you should be ranting about, not tour operators who are small family businesses protecting their livelihood.

To be fair to Darren he did mention 10% in his original post. I do not think anyone mentioned about companies charging more than the 10% rate.

2% or 11% these surcharges are unfair no matter much you cover it up.

@ Lee

I did not mention that any companies charging over 10% would mean that consumers would be able to cancel their holiday - but would they get their money back if the holiday is not within the cancellation period?

I guess not, but maybe you could clarify.

I didn’t mention this because I was informed that it’s very unlikely that any company would charge more than 10%, this actually came from ABTA.

Consumers aren’t going to cancel a holiday if ti means that they do not get a refund, so saying that they can cancel the holiday is not very helpful at all.

Surcharges are unfair - fact. But is it really a fact?
Look at it another way - you book a hire car with one of the 15 abta companies in November 2007, for a holiday in May 2008. Let’s say the cost of the car is £100 and they invoke the full 10% surcharge - you end up paying £110.
Book the same car on line, in Euros in November for payment when you arrive in May, the cost is 143Euros and you calculated that cost to be £100 (the exchange rate was 1,4355 in Nov). When you actually come to pay for the car in May the charge on your credit card will be around £118 - I have just checked a credit card statement where I got an exchange rate of 1,2245.
So, even paying a surcharge, you are better off paying the Tour Operator in Sterling.
And, no, at Aspects of Spain we are not currently charging any surcharges. And yes, we have in the past given our clients the benefit of good exchange rates, by offering great late deals that would otherwise have been impossible.
There are two sides to every coin….

Q.I did not mention that any companies charging over 10% would mean that consumers would be able to cancel their holiday - but would they get their money back if the holiday is not within the cancellation period?
A. If the Surcharge at any time rose above the 10%, then yes clients are entitled to cancel with full refund.

Darren’s statement “Consumers aren’t going to cancel a holiday if ti means that they do not get a refund, so saying that they can cancel the holiday is not very helpful at all.”

A. See original post and answer above.