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29/04/2005: "Leave it Late to Book that Place in the Sun"
Leave it Late to Book that Place in the Sun
by Frank Barrett
Holiday companies have something of the farmer about them. Ask them how their business is going and they will normally present a litany of abject misery. Fate, it seems, has singled them for rough treatment - everything from he fast-rising price of oil to the timing of the General Election has conspired to send them crashing to almost certain insolvency.
This is the traditional April wail of tour operator grief. For almost as long as i can remember - which sadly is very long - the official start of the holiday business summer season in April has been an occasion for them to rail loudly at their rotton luck.
While they're angry at many things, they are mostly annoyed at one thing: us. Their life would be made a lot easier if only we would go out now and buy their holidays.
In the good old days, we all used to rush to the travel angents the day after Boxing Day and book our summer holidays six months or more in advance.
Tour operators banked our cheques, contracted the correct number of hotel rooms, laid on the required number of charter flights, hired the appropriate number of staff. Their work done for the year, they could withdraw to their comfortable Caribbean retreats and count their cash. Now, with late booking the norm rather than exception, tour operators spend the summer living off their nerves hoping that booking will eventually arrive. Their anxiety translates into the customed glut of cut price deals. Chck out the likes of Teletext Holidays (www.teletextholidays.co.uk) Holidays Direct (www.direct.co.uk) and XL.com (www.xl.com) and you will find the traditional £99 special offer for seven-night packages and £199 for 14 nights.
The early booking pictures usually reveals a number of striking pattersn. This year, the early booking Top Ten produced by travel search engine www.surf2travel.com shows a switch to Turkey and Greec, while, amazingly, Orlando has dropped out of the best-seller list altogether.
It remains one of the big puzzles of the travel business why bookings to the States are failing to boom.
Given that the pound this week reached $1.90 there has hardly been a better time to visit in the past 20 years. But 20 years ago nobody would have dreamed of booking a package to the States as a last minute deal.
Going to America was a major adventure which needed lengthy consideration. Not any more. We may have decided where we would like to go this summer some time ago, but most of us are sitting tight until we're happy we have the spare cash to pay for the trip. Then we;ll buy it from the operator who seems to be offering the best deal - there is little loyalty anymore to any provider.
As we continue to delay our bookings, the tour operators will continue to beat their brains out. And the bargains will keep on coming.
This article was taken from the TravelLog magazine.
