Peak season will always be expensive; Nardi pours oil on the fire. TravelMole Comment by Jeremy Skidmore

The decision by several of the biggest travel companies to offer selected peak season discounts and free child places have prompted plenty of discussion.

Are they a token sop to the government, which is determined to halt the rise in the number of children being taken out of school in term time, or a genuine move to get a flatter pricing schedule across the summer?

There’s no question that tour operators wanted to be seen to be doing something positive for families. In its meetings with ministers, the Federation of Tour Operators could easily have told the government to take a hike. Ministers do not have the power to tell companies how to price their products.

However, the issue of term time absences has gathered steam under Labour, which last year introduced a schedule of fines for parents taking their children out of school. Certainly, the operators did not want to be blamed for the truancy.

To be fair, many of the offers are genuine, even if they are for a limited period (until the end of March). Free child places can be hard to come by at this time of year. But the deals are nowhere near good enough to make a lot of parents think twice about taking their kids away on a shoulder season break.

Virgin Holidays, for example, is offering £400 off a peak season booking and $100 worth of Disney cash to spend in the theme park. It’s a generous offer, but when you consider that a package for two adults and two children to Florida at that time of year comes out at nearly £3,000 before the discount, it suddenly doesn’t seem that great. Shop around in May and you’ll probably pick up a similar family holiday for half the price.

The Parent Teachers’ Association isn’t that impressed with the deals. It wants a flat pricing structure across the whole season.

Unfortunately, that just isn’t realistic. As we know, tour operators make all their money in the peak period. They would love to be able to contract hotel rooms for just July and August, but have to take the whole summer or nothing at all. Discounts are rife in the shoulder season because any money coming in is a bonus during the loss-making period.

I’m no apologist for tour operators, but you could make a strong case to say holidays are not overpriced in the peak, they’re just underpriced in the off-peak periods.

The most that parents can hope for is a slight narrowing of the huge discrepancies in prices between the different months. Perhaps tour operators can trim their profits a little during the peak period and charge a bit more in the quieter months. But with intense competition about, I wouldn’t bet on it.

What do you think the answer is? Email us at the link below.

Meanwhile, few will shed a tear for Riccardo Nardi, the ABTA legal chief-turned-fraudster who has just begun four and a half years of porridge eating.

Nardi has ruined his career, and possibly his life, and has received a fair sentence for a gross breach of trust. He should be allowed to get on with serving his sentence, but his pathetic open letter from prison does him no favours.

He claims he loved ABTA – God help the people he hated – and that he did not commit a cynical and carefully planned attack but rather a rushed, panicked, unprofessional and ridiculous act.

Well, some of that statement is right. He swindled the association over a prolonged period – yes it was unprofessional and ridiculous, but it certainly wasn’t rushed and panicked. If that wasn’t cynical and carefully planned, then I don’t know what was.

And his comments about not buying luxury items, except a Porsche and watches which gave him no pleasure at all, could have been lifted straight from a comedy sketch. However, I doubt ABTA is laughing.

I strongly believe that people should be allowed to get on with their lives once they have served their debt to society. Nardi, thankfully, will never again be a lawyer, but he could come back from this and, at some stage in the future, make a worthwhile contribution to society.

In the meantime, shut up and take your medicine.

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