Upmarket operators resist the opportunity to fill seats at discount prices
Tour operators are letting aircraft seats and hotel rooms remain empty rather than selling them off cheaply to the “wrong sort of customer”, according to a report in The Times.
The newspaper reports that a surplus of holidays has meant that there are bargains galore at the moment, especially to Greece, and goes on to quote a range of cheap deals including “a week’s B&B in Malta for GBP71, a week in Santorini for GBP98, and seven nights’ self-catering in Majorca for GBP129.
However, the newspaper states that many operators are worried that a late-booking culture will develop if there are too many attractive last-minute deals available this year, and that the net result will be a downgrading of facilities across the Mediterranean.
The Telegraph quotes Noel Josephides, of the Greece specialist Sunvil, thus: “We don’t go down to ridiculous prices so you can have £99 customers in the same accommodation as proper clients, who tend to be middle-class professionals. You don’t want yobs about.”
And Gary David, of Cadogan Holidays, is quoted as saying: “We do not send people on big cut-price late deals. It upsets other customers. People on the cheapest deals don’t care where they are; they just drink lots of beer and eat cheap food.”
