Why book a package holiday anyway? I’m only ever disappointed. Much better to do it yourself.

Darren your frustrations are valid, but in all honesty, for weeks now you have been searching for a holiday departing on the 13th september, 2 days away now and a budget of £300.00 Some excellent suggestions have been made and I wonder how much time in research and visits to travel Agents has actually cost you in real time and money spent as opposed to booking earlier and getting the holiday you want.

This coming week-end is particularly heavily booked as traditionally the school holidays are over and every body has the same thought, School holidays have finished so it must be cheaper to travel! Not So. Also the UK Weather has meant more people trying to escape as well.

Tour operators have slashed capacity and are trying to resist discounting, and it’s time that people realised that they pay a fair price for their holiday.

In all honesty Darren, as a Travel agent I have to evaluate when a client makes an enquiry as to how much time I devote to finding that client his holiday or to evaluate if they are just time wasters!

A Single traveller looking for a holiday with a Budget of £300.00 to include everything including Insurance, taxes etc, not forgetting at this late stage Ticket on Departure charges has not got much chance of realistically finding the holiday of his/her dreams within close proximity to beaches, restauarants, and flying on the day of his/her choice to the destination of his/her choice from their local departure airport and then expect to book it within two days of departure.

The Key is to have flexibility of budget, Destination, travel up to 5-7 days either side, and to travel from any UK airport to any destination that might still have availability.

And For £300.00 and a likely return of less than £30.00 if a booking is taken, how long is the Travel agent going to spend on time-waters ? Probably no time at all, unless for that £300.00 budget the Agent can see that the client is genuine and is prepared to move the goal posts, if they truly want that last minute holiday to be a good one and not accepting the first holiday because of it’s low price which could be a holiday from hell.

Lee

Very well put. Darren I think from a travel agents view it could not have been put clearer. Just think if you where to see any other professional they be charging

Remember this is an industry that has sold holidays below cost for years. That is why school holidays are expensive. As an example using general prices only. A holiday costs a company £500, so in low season they sell it for what they can get, around £300, in mid season it is £500, so far they not made a penny in fact they have lost money. So school holidays the companies charge 700 or more to make up there losses. Then to make a profit they sell holidays at the edge of school time for around £550. This works with airlines hotels everyone. It not we ripping people off, it are just we needs to make the money then or there would not be travel companies.

At the end of the day if there are not enough holidays left why sell them for a loss? The ravel Industry has cut millions of holidays from what used to be on offer, trying to match demand to supply.

I agree - the online travel industry has a lot of work to do if it really wants to cater to travellers needs. I think one of the main problems is that travellers are all looking for different things in travel sites. Darren you say that you want the option of choosing how close you can be to the beach, which is probably a common desire, but there are probably a lot of people who wouldn’t be interested in that option (maybe they only care about price or the number of nightclubs).

We recently found through a study that travellers on their way to France were more interested in usability of a travel site, whereas those going to Greece were more keen on traveller reviews. As more and more people worldwide go online and, indeed, book their holidays online, the travel industry is going to find these varied wants and needs in travel booking an increasing challenge to manage.

There’s some interesting thoughts Darren. From a web usability point of view, do you think you could have a ‘microsoft office’ type paperclip to help you when booking a website.

For instance, you could have a “It looks like you’re going to Paris. The average cost of food is 30 Euros, cost of transport is 5 Euros, etc…” and then it can total up the cots. It could also link out to places you may be interested in?

Nothing like this does happen yet, and the travel industry, I think caters for the savvy traveller. I think it feels that if you’re booking your holiday on the web, you know what you want to do and what to spend. Perhaps this was true 5 years ago, but now everyone does it. I don’t think the industry’s caught up with its customers in the web-based world yet.

I think though, there’s plenty of content out there - you just need to find it. Which is the hard bit.

Lee puts it very well indeed. When I was on the counter, the initial tasks were a) to sum up the client - were they being reasonable in their request - or just a time waster and then, b) depending on the outcome of that, try and find out what they really are looking for. On balance, clients know naff all about travel. They know, maybe, a few resorts and may have heard a bit more from their mates - but to find a really knowledgeable seasoned traveller was rare. The travel agents task is to take what he or she has found out about the aspirations and the (reasonable) budget of the traveller and then, using knowledge of resorts (gleened mauinly from educationals) to combine the two. This the web cannot do this - and never will be able to do, you cannot have a discussion with a computer. Your idea of saying “find a resort 200 yards from the beach” is daft and it goes back to what I said earlier about Dubai beach holidays in August etc. You would be happy with Magaluf? Or would you prefer Maderia? Gran Canaria or Teneriffe? Would you really like a two week holiday in the Maldives? You would! Well, you go there and you will find out why a week is more than enough! - Yet everyone raves about the place. As I say, the web will answer your question - BUT have you asked the right question - and are you getting the answer from the right source?

@Murray
Actually we are developing the functionality to be able to find hotels which are “Close to a beach”. However there are a number of problems:

1) The integrity of the data - it would need to be confirmed how far from the beach the hotel really is
2) Distance from a beach, and access to - these are very different things!
3) How far is “close to the beach”!

I agree Darren. I’m feeling much more inclined to opt for a package deal lately (That ATOL protection could be very useful). I’ve written about the renaissance of the package holiday on the Auto Europe blog. But in terms of guidance for finding the perfect holiday, the internet isn’t a substitute for speaking to a travel agent, and I wonder if it ever will be for some consumers.