Why have Travel City Direct prices shot up

spaceman5

Since the collapse of xl, travel city direct who specialise in florida holidays have been taken over by virgin, i tried pricing up a holiday didn`t get very far before i got the shock of a lifetime, got as far as getting a quote for flights and standard accomodation on international drive, the price was £6800 before we had even added car hire, park tickets etc, last year we went with them when they was still owned by xl and the price was £4200 which included flights, accomodation(which was staying on one of the disney resorts), car hire, park tickets, so just wondering why virgin seem to be making it a hell of a lot more expensive now, especially as the cost of fuel has come down alot since then, the main reason travel city seemed so popular was because they was a lot cheaper than other operators, surely now people will go else where, you could probably fly direct with virgin themselves for the same price, Dave

delwynshd

I know, its silly aint it

we are out pricing them by far this year

withabix

They've got to take into account the 'credit' they are offering to people waiting for refunds from Travel City Direct somehow...they do that by putting the prices up!

alanrowell

Working Lunch had an article about TCD today

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/7818491.stm

There's also a news article on BBC News 24

bagand96

Its Travel City Direct by name but that's it. Virgin Holidays bought the name, and database of customers but nothing else, it is effectively Virgin Holidays.

As for pricing, time will tell, its early days, will be interesting to see how Virgin TCD end up comparing with TCD under XL control. But remember XL went bankrupt; and part of the reason for that was undoubtedly underselling holidays to keep their market share.... unfortunately that, with other reasons, turned out to not be a viable business.

casevlloyds

As the above poster says - Travel City Direct are now Virgin Holidays under the old name.

They've kept the name as it had a strong market share and client bank.

Travel City Direct were cheap - they also went bankrupt so obviously too cheap to turn a profit - hence why Virgin are not charging the same!

spaceman5

it was xl that went bankrupt though, TCD just happened to belong to them, TCD was the best bit about xl, and probably kept them afloat longer than otherwise they would have, not saying they where making a huge profit on the florida holidays but they where making some, i didnt expect virgin to charge the same, but somewhere in the middle would have been better, its alright virgin buying it because of there customer base, but those customers only went with TCD for one reason, and that was the price, they wont pay the prices being quoted now, if they can get it cheaper elsewhere, seems like virgin maybe making a mstake but time will tell, Dave

bagand96

I don't know the ins and outs of the accounts of XL and all its subsidiaries, but I don't think any of the business performed exceptionally well. They were underselling on all fronts. If TCD really was doing well then I would have expected the administrators to sell it off as a going concern; this didn't happen, all aspects of XL UK were wound down (the French and German arms were the good bits of the business and did get sold.)

Regardless of XL and their business, Virgin own it now and they have to sell to make money, especially in this market place; the holiday market will take a huge blow this year for a variety of reasons. It is probably also the case that Virgin have higher overheads than XL,for example TCD flights will now be on Virgin Atlantic, which i suspect will be costlier than XL charter flights...

Amys

TCD was not sol;d as a going concern, in fact looking at the way it was wound up it did not look like there was any real attempt at this, which means it was unlikely that even this was a going concern. Before TCD (or rather XL) went under the prices quoted by TCD for 2009 had already significantly increased, so TCD realised they needed to up ther prices.

The company is now owned by virgin, so prices will increase. XL was not liquid so it went under, charge too little and were not profitable enough so went under, that is what happens when a firm has large market dchare but cannot or does nt control costs or charge enough.

Virgin may have been giving credit to travellers for lost deposits, but do not forget that was part of a claim under the insruiance scheme, ther forms had to be completed with Virgin nominated as the new travel firm.

Prices may come down agian later, they usually do with Virgin, this is peak holiday booking time, but if you want a cheaper FL holiday then it may be worth doing a DIY booking.