Big Four rubbish damning report

The “Big Four” tour operators are up in arms over a Consumer Association (CA) report recommending holidaymakers travel with smaller independent operators.

The CA’s campaign website, has published the results of a survey carried out by Holiday Which? that asked readers whether they would recommend the company to a friend.

The Big Four operators are in the worst ten of the table, and leading the survey are small independent operators.

Operators say the survey does not represent the views of their customers. A TUI spokesperson told TravelMole: "We strongly disagree with the report. It is misleading because Which? readers don’t represent the range of people booking holidays in the UK."

A MyTravel spokesperson told TravelMole: "The Which? report is out of touch with the target market of the Big Four. It is not comparing like for like. Our customers don’t have the cash to go on tailor-made holidays."

A JMC spokesperson told TravelMole: “Which? has a habit of trying to take a market and simplify it. But you can’t compare specialist operators with the mass market. Some of the operators in their report don’t even consider themselves package holiday providers”.

A statement made by First Choice said it was very surprised at its ranking in the report. The statement said: “Independently audited research of 300,000 customers shows that 93 percent of First Choice customers rated their Summer 2002 holiday as good or excellent…First Choice believes that these figures provide a more realistic result compared to the Which Report whose entire league table was based on a total of only 12,480 respondents, of which only 853 had experienced a First Choice Group holiday over the last year”.

The Consumer Association website, which has encouraged readers to switch mobile phone companies and bank accounts in the past, says customers may not be aware of the options they have. It published a map allowing readers to look up their preferred destination and view the best-performing operators for that destination.

A statement on the website said: "Many people buy after a visit to just one agent, unaware that the big high street chains exist to funnel customers to their in-house companies, the "Big Four" tour operators – Airtours, First Choice, JMC, and Thompson." The statement continued, "they [the Big Four] use their muscle to snap up small independent operators and ultimately leave the customer with less choice".

The website cites a case study from a holidaymaker, Adam Henderson-Parish, who booked a bungalow in Benidorm with First Choice, only to find on arrival that it was a caravan. He paid a premium to upgrade to a hotel and said he was confronted with broken glass, vomit and graffiti littering public areas. He said when he complained, First Choice reps were unhelpful.

The operators were rated according to their brochure, accommodation, holiday reps, and travel arrangements, which all scored badly for JMC, First Choice, and Airtours. The results of the Which? survey were:

Best Five
1.Laskarina (Independent Greek-island specialist)
2.VFB Holidays (Independent France specialist)
3.Great Rail Journeys (Independent worldwide rail holidays)
4.Swan Hellenic (Independent cruises)
5.Tapestry (Independent Greece and Turkey specialist)

Worst Five
1.JMC (Thomas Cook )
2.First Choice
3.Golden Sun (independent Greece and Cyprus specialist)
4.Airtours (MyTravel)
5.Unijet (First Choice)

10.Crystal (TUI UK Europe and North America specialist)

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