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Simon Calder bites back
Travel editor and television presenter Simon Calder has enraged agents by his comments on a BBC programme about the wide availability of holidays for below £300.
Agents objected to the comments he made on BBC Breakfast about slow holidays sales and how there were cheap deals to be had.
On the industry’s Facebook page ‘Travel Gossip’, agents challenged him to show them these deals and to spend a day in an agency to find out what it’s like trying to keep customers happy.
In response, Calder said he spends a fair amount of time visiting travel businesses, but hasn’t spent a long stretch at a travel agency – as opposed to an hour or two – for a fair while.
"I’m trying to fix up a day with one of the folks who have responded," he added.
Here’s what else he had to say:
"Hello everyone. I’m intrigued by the responses to my observation that there are lots of peak season, sub-£300 packages on sale. The assertion from a number of agents seems to be that such holidays are not available.
Well, I invite you to do what I did: search on the customer-facing websites of Monarch, Olympic, Thomas Cook, Thomson …. Go through a dummy booking process right through to the payment page.
Each company has a good selection of sub-£300 packages during the school summer holidays – and yes, that does include baggage, transfers, bonding and any applicable under-occupancy surcharges.
The other criticism is that these holidays are available only online, and not through agents. The fact that customers can buy some packages more cheaply than the trade is certainly a subject worth discussing, particularly given Thomas Cook"s recent talk about "consistent pricing across all channels".
But it doesn’t affect my observation that, in response to sluggish sales, there are lots of cheap Mediterranean packages out there."
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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