‘Poor little diddums’ says Piers Morgan to agents
Good Morning Britain presenter Piers Morgan has told agents to ‘stop being so damn greedy then’ in a patronising Twitter response to a TravelMole story yesterday.
Morgan, who is now co-presenting the ITV breakfast show with Susanna Reid three days a week, was responding to agents who had expressed their anger over his interview on Wednesday morning with ABTA spokesman Sean Tipton on price ‘hikes’ in school holidays.
Agents had taken to the Facebook forum Travel Gossip to complain about Morgan’s approach to the interview, saying he was ‘rude’ and a ‘disgrace to journalism’ and had totally missed the point.
The ABTA spokesman had tried to argue that school holidays should be staggered by region to ease the pressure on families, but Morgan was dismissive and accused travel companies of being greedy.
After seeing TravelMole’s report of the uproar, the former Daily Mirror editor posted the following on Twitter:
Over 200 Good Morning Britain viewers posted on the programme’s Facebook page following the interview, the majority of them in support of Morgan’s stance. Many are also backing his Twitter response today.
One viewer called on Morgan to start a petition to the government calling for flexible school holiday dates, but others said it would be unworkable and would make no difference to prices.
Only a few viewers said they understood the way the market works and recognised it’s down to the concept of supply and demand.
Those in the industry pointed out that the television industry also works on the same principle.
"If any industry shouldn’t comment about demand led pricing its commercial television," said Paul Connellan in a post to TravelMole
"The differential in advertising rates between say Coronation Street and a mid afternoon show is many many times greater than holiday costs in peak of off peak."
Peter Mackness added: "ITV, just like SKY, record huge profits netting 5% and more each year. The travel industry would all welcome margins such as those achieved by the broadcasting companies. A TV channel asking people millions of people to pay a pound with the chance to win a holiday that costs a few thousand isn’t exactly an honest way to do business."
* Did you see the interview on Wednesday? What did you think of it? Please send us your comments by clicking on POST YOUR COMMENT below.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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