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22/06/2005: "Parents Face August Holiday Price Hike"
Parents Face August Holiday Price Hike by Jonathan Prynn, Evening Standard
Families still face huge mark-ups on holiday prices when schools break up for the summer, a new survey says.
Brochure prices rise by as much as 90 per cent in August, despite government pressure on the industry to stop this.
Biggest premiums were on the French Riviera, where a typical three-star hotel bill for a family of four peaked at £1,667 in mid-August but fell to £887 by early September. Holidays in Antigua and Turkey also saw big rises.
Mark-ups are lower for massmarket destinations such as Spain, Cyprus and Greece, where there is more competition. School holiday breaks for Cyprus and Spain were only 15 per cent higher on average.
The survey by Morgan Stanley consumer banking found a British holiday camp would charge 42 per cent more in August than in September.
Holiday companies have reported bumper bookings for this summer, and say pricing is set by supply and demand.
But parents, who now face a £100 fine if they take their children out of school for holidays, complain they are at the mercy of the industry. Ministers would like to see discounts of up to 10 per cent for families who keep the rules.
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Pet Travel Tips
- Ensure you have a pet-passport for your animal, meaning you avoid the six
month quarantine that is otherwise neccessary.
- Ensure you are making a decision based on what will be best for your pet
- if it is happier at home and does not appear willing to get into a car,
it is unlikely to be happy surrounded by new smells and people.
- Make sure your hotel still givesyou good service as a pet owner, and make
sure you do your part for other holidaymakers by only taking a calm and well-behaved
pet on holidays with you.
- Be aware that most hotels will not allow you to leave your pet alone in
the room, so if you take your pet on holiday with you it really will be going
everywhere with you. This also means you have a plan for visiting places where
a pet cannot be taken - leaving it in the car is rarely acceptable in hot
or cold climates.
- Ensure you have comprehensive pet insurance - there is a high risk of animals
becoming ill in foreign countries, as they are contact with the native dirt
and germs a lot more than ourselves.
- Have a back-up plan. Animals are unpredictable, if you get to your destination
and something goes wrong, have a course of action planned out - perhaps meaning
there is someone back home ready to recieve the animal if you have to send
it home, or you can make return plans that do not lose you money spend on
travel and accomodation.
- In a foreign country, silly though it may seem to some, your animal will
benefit to the same extra care as us. Sun cream, sunglasses and coats are
a few of the things that may be neccessary for your animal in an unfamiliar
climate.
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