XL....MONEYSAVING IS NOT the be all & end-all-a lesson learnt

Tozer

TRAVELMAN wrote: »

Quote ' think the lesson learnt travelman is that the trend of holidaymakers not going to travel agents will rise sharply after the third biggest in the country went bust'

Do'hhhhhhhhh..............YNOT it was not a TRAVEL AGENT THAT WENT BUST- It was a tour operator.

Precisely WHY people need a good independant agent-as most (as proved by you) do not hava a clue as to the difference between agent & Tour Operator.

A few quid more & an ATOL package is yours-FULL refund-OR change of flights.

Pay a touch more-full protection-save a few quid-lose either ALL your money or get a refund on the flight only-leaving you to book a much dearer alternative-choice is yours.

Had someone call me a week ago-we were £40 dearer than xl.com-I discounted down to the '£40 dearer' (for a family of 4!) & they turned me down-choosing to save £40. They were from MSE. They booked with a maestro card-NO monies back from xl-70% canx. charge from the accom supplier.
IS THIS MONEYSAVING???!

Travelman speaks a lot of sense. For myself, I prefer to arrange everything direct, but then my holidays aren't usually found in a brochure. That's my choice and I protect myself with paying for thinsg by credit card (hey maybe they charge an additional 2% but so what?) and have annual worldwide travel insurance.

But you know the funniest thing? I may have paid a bit more for my choice of airline (I go by schedule and service and don't mind paying a bit extra)and hotel but I know that they will exist when I head off to the airport.

Moneysaving is all on balance. Cheapo airlines with [EMAIL="!!!!"]!!!![/EMAIL] service? Forget them.

ynot2005

i dont need a tour operator, travel agent or ATOL either travelman, or a good independant travel guru as yourself

i dont for one minute think this a wake up call for cost cutting holiday buyers, its the death knell of letting somone else click away to book you a holiday

foriegn holidays 20 years ago was all a mystery, experts needed to do this and that

time have changed., i last went into a travel agents in 1984 to book a holiday, and have managed to even go without a good independant guru too, and that will be the case for many millions more now

the 3rd biggest TOUR OPERATOR went bust, confidence has been shattered

poet123

The thing is however, that if say for arguments sake, Easyjet or Ryanair went bust I would have paid by CC and thus get all my money back. If they dont, I have saved a lot of money,....a win win situation as far as I can see. Provided you know what you are buying and take care to follow their rules the low cost carriers are fine,I have never had a problem.

ynot2005

exactly poet123, of course a good independant guru would sell you an ATOL protected deal for £100 extra and you can have piece of mind

nah easyjet or ryanair, book your hotel yourself and save £100, thats what millions are doing on short breaks , travel agents offices are empty except for a few old folk who de need help and re-assurance

travelman is like old fashioned independant motor insurance offices...remember them!!, of course they had the knowledge the expertise and all that.

XL hell, credit crunch, giveaway flights, it adds up to one thing for me

MarkyMarkD

jetboy wrote: »

Couple of points here. Firstly It is not the consumer who brought on this mess. XL holidays would've been priced at a level to deliver a reasonable return. Unforseen circumstances have unwound the whole industry over the last 8 months. Nobody expected oil to be $100+ a barrel. By the way AVTUR as used by airlines is still $139 a barrel. That said, XL had debts of £143 million. Not that long ago that would'nt necessarily been such a massive problem. Mytravel had debts of £910.9 million once upon a time. Nobody pulled the plug. The finance industry has gone trigger happy. Bearing in mind it will cost at least £10 million to repatriate the XL cutomers downroute too. This all smacks of the mess made by our esteemed banks following the Northern Rock debacle. Nobody would lend money for mortgages unless at silly rates for months. Now it's too late and recession looms, suddenly we can get fixed rates at 5.6% again..bit late though. Financial institutions are shooting from the hip..that's why we will see another 30 airlines go. Willie Walsh is not exaggerating. In the aftermath of 911, the banks closed down Gill Airways...and it wasn't even losing money!
As for travel agents versus buy online. I can understand that opinions of those who claim the high street is the only way. Travel agents have been feeling the squeeze for years. If you find a good one, you're on a real winner. Unfortunately there are a very large number of mediocre ones. That was the reason I came away from using them years ago. I have saved thousands by not employing their services. That said there is a place for them and if you believe they are giving peace of mind in the current climate then fair enough. Personally I'm quite happy to continue online, armed with credit card and airline failure protection.
The gap left in the market by the collapse of XL will be hard to fill initially and I fear that any bargains for next year will be very few and far between.

Whilst I don't know the precise details behind XL's problems, I can only presume that it's down to poor fuel price hedging strategy.

If the tour operators and airlines who are currently in trouble had been purchasing their fuel forward at the time they sold the seats, and pricing the cost into their tickets, then they wouldn't have got into difficulty.

It is the same as Ryanair predicting zero profits this year, because they completed screwed up by not buying fuel forward. Conversely, Flybe have just announced record profits because they had a more sensible hedging policy.

jetboy

XL's problems ran a little deeper. £143 million represents a lot more than just hedging. The trouble with hedging is it's a bit like roulette. There will always be an element of luck (or lack thereof). Barclay's pulled funding for hedging 9 days before Excel went down. It was quietly expected within industry circles that the wind up would take place the friday before last. I am still surprised that nobody came to some form of rescue but in the current climate competitors seem happy to watch their rivals disintegrate. You'll see a lot more of this over the next few months in the airline industry across Europe.
As for Travelman, well I don't agree with his opinions at present but he's put a lot of good info up on this forum over the years which doesn't warrant the lambasting that's going on.

marble

After all this 'uproar', I thought I'd tell my little tale of my brush with Excel.

Back in June, I booked a week in Egypt for myself and my partner. Thomson and Thomas Cook were looking for £550 each (£1100 all in) for a week all inclusive at one of the Hilton resorts.

I decided I could do it cheaper booking myself. I posted here with my flight deal (and I apologise to anyone who decided it looked like a good deal and did the same). The flight total came to £375. On top of that, the hotel cost £360 (after quidco and a 10% Hotelopia discount code I found on here).

My total came to £735 ... much cheaper than the big travel agents though I obviously lacked this 'ATOL' protection. Since Excel went bust, I actually lost my £226 flights (I don't have a credit card ... a problem I'm sure a few others on this board have). Still, I managed to rebook flights on BA/Condor for exactly the same dates for £280.

Total cost of my holiday (even after the lost Excel flights) is £1015 ... still cheaper than Thomson and Thomas Cook were after!

The moral of my tale is that you can definitely save money by not using travel agents ... even after the occasional hickup. Over the years I've saved thousands by booking direct rather than through a middle man who takes a cut. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it's probably safer not to use a travel agent. The number of tales I've heard of travel agents going bust (the one man working out of his spare room type) is unbelievable. Don't put all your eggs in one basket ... book things through different people (even if it isn't the cheapest option) ... this limits your exposure if something does go wrong.

Al

Pennywise

jayok wrote: »

As well as thanking you for highlighting this, I would much prefer that the Government will strengthen consumer protection to cover all payment methods when paying online. It is ludicrous that consumer A gets full protection when paying with a Mastercard and consumer B gets no protection when paying with a Switch card

There is a massive difference. The credit card company receives a much higher "fee" for processing the transaction which is why you often have to pay a c/c surcharge. Paying by switch and the charge is far less, probably just a few pence, hence no compensation. If you want compensation and protection from a debit card, then you'd soon find that you'd be paying the c/c surcharge on that as the banks would undoubtedly increase their fees for processing it.

ynot2005

spot on marble, the middlemen travel agents have had their slice of the cake on the back of the mystery surrounding booking holidays abroad, the internet has changed everything.

ATOL protection whats that all about, the independant travellers without ATOL stranded abroad will make their own way back if they came on a XL flight, there will be no problem with the accomodation because they paid for it.

wait for all the ATOL protected horror stories to appear, kicked out of accomodation, moved about, hanging around for days waiting for something to happen, complete chaos.

ATOL vastly overated if you ask me, how would i get back from tenerife because my XL flight wont be returning without ATOL protection, well i would have the choice of hundreds of routes back to the uk, at a time and day that suited me, the cost might end up a little more, but thats been racked up in savings over the years

travelmans advice on good independant travel gurus and ATOL protection...well perhaps some will go down that route, most will join the ever increasing numbers who do it themselves and save money

trisha

Travel agents have to exist for some people who do not have the internet or the knowledge or bravery to do it themselves.

I haven't used a travel agent for many years now, we like to go to the smaller lesser known Greek islands, most people working in travel agents have little or no knowledge other than the large touristy ones, I enjoy the challenge of searching online I check out favourable flight times,connecting ferry times, I use Trip Advisor to check out accommodation and I can always post questions in the relevant forum if I need to. We are probably in the minority as we don't like going on package holidays, especially ones which have predominantly British tourists, not snobby, just like to experience the culture and mix with other nationalities.

We have had people ask us how we dared to travel on local buses, they had to rely on the overpriced trips to go anywhere, as for island hopping, and what would we do without a rep to help us, these are type of people for whom a travel agent is a necessity, nothing wrong with that, it is their choice, a lot of people are not so adventurous and like the comfort of a travel agent advising them what to do and where to go.

I don't see it as a money issue, if you like to do your own research and planning you can tailor make it to what you want from your holiday, if at the end of the day if it works out cheaper, than that's a bonus, the moral is to research well and always pay by credit card. which ever way you book it if a tour operator or airline go down you will get your money back.

Since it was published in the press that XL had cancelled Carribean routes I have been expecting something to happen and googling for news every day, On Thursday night I read on BBC news that it could go down on Friday, by 07:30 I was on the internet booking another flight, I was lucky I got it as by 10:00 the flights were either gone or doubled in price.

Trisha