Insider Info

TRAVELMAN_2

;)Hello Moneysavers,

I'm a Travel Consultant working from home & feel that the following information will help you 'bag-a-bargain' for your Holidays.

I notice that if you search under 'holidays' on this site it says, in a nutshell- to haggle to get the price down. This is true in some respects & call centres/Tour Operators direct MAY go this way-obviously depending on what commissions/margin they have built in.

Where it won't work is if the deal is say, £149, the agent makes 15% commission max. on this & will not discount-for obvious reasons!

A thing to realise with this industry is that many people you call from the Internet/Teletext, are self-employed,typically earning 30% of the gross commission for themselves, so consequently if during a busy time, say June/July/August someone wants to haggle the agent will just refuse-knowing another call will come soon!

The reason for my mail & the above is that there is ANOTHER money-saving way that is overlooked by most (if not all) High Street Agents & a lot of Net/text Agents-& that is 'self-packaging'. By this I don't mean customers getting an Easyjet flight & accommodation separately, BUT by going through one of the specialist Agents who have their own ATOL licences a complete 'package' can be made for the customers-including reps/transfers, often at MUCH LESS than a Tour Operators package price (even if already reduced). This not only saves the customers the task of haggling & ringing round (& us Brits if we're honest are not too good at haggling!) but also provides the financial protection that ATOL gives. As an example, if say Easyjet flights were booked & you booked the accomodation separately, & you received a call/mail saying that the Hotel was full, there was a mistake with the booking, or you arrived & had been 'overbooked' (i.e. owner got a better offer on the day-it happens!)-you would have no comeback as the flights & accommodation were booked separately-so you could be left with a flight that was impossible/very expensive to change & no Hotel! In this situation as the Hotel was not booked with an ATOL flight or as a package-you'd have no legal redress for the accommodation costs!

If the holiday is put together by an ATOL holder as an ATOL package, the Agent becomes a Tour Operator with booking conditions-so the AGENT would be responsible for getting money back/or finding another Hotel!

That's the boring bit out of the way....here's the moneysaving bit! By packaging up through an ATOL Agent as an ATOL package it SAVES a great deal of money in 90% of cases. The savings that can be made now for Holidays from May onwards-especially for families in peak season (Canaries self-catering are great for July/August)-is staggering! As an example, for a 4* brand new Luxury Hotel in Gran Canaria for May/June, half-board, Sovereign Holidays want £1800 for it for 2 adults & 1 child, (before any discount-they give 14% to agents so I'd guess max. discount would be 6/7%) , though as an ATOL package with a private taxi transfers-£1150 with no need to haggle! By taking advantage of the good exchange rates (especially for Dominican Republic/Mexico-we pay in $'ss!) people can save a massive amount against the High Street by getting a quote on an ATOL 'packaged' deal.

Packaging under ATOL will not beat ALL quotes (a very small amount of the Tour Operators direct deals are impossible for an Agent to beat) but will (in most cases) beat 90% of high street prices & include that nice private taxi-no milk round coaches!

I feel this is a real 'money-saving' opportunity for canny customers who are looking for a good deal.

Please find below an intersting thread I posted on the holidaytruths site that has great relavence to the above.

http://pub65.ezboard.com/fholidaytruthscommunityfrm47.showMessage?topicID=226.topic

I'd be very interested in your thoughts on the above or your travel experiences & if anyone needs help/advice please post-I'll do my best to help. Please note I'm usually off Sundays/most of Mondays!


Kind regards,

Chris.

vanoonoo

hi chris - thanks for all that - I maybe wrong (and hope I am) but I get the feeling that you are touting for business, in which case this really should go on the referrers board. If you're jsut offering a benchmarking service then please accept my apologies. no offence intended.

there is actually a lot more advice on this board than "haggle to get the price down" although that is always a good tip. I come from a travel industry background and a number of other regular posters on this board are seasoned travellers and current or ex travel industry too, welcome to the merry band if it's advice and tips you are offering, if it's clients you are looking for perhaps you could repost on referrers?

either way - great to have you on board (pun entirely intended)

TRAVELMAN_2

Hello!!

Thanks for reading my post! Before I put this up, I did e-mail Martin. I find the whole topic fascinating-especially the way Tour Ops (in my opinion) rip people off!

My comments re: the 'haggling' bit were just aimed at that-of course I did not intend or mean to imply that the board was JUST about this-sorry if it came across this way.

I just feel that so many people could benefit from knowing about the ATOL packaging process & I'd welcome comments/questions regarding this.

The moneysavers on this board are welcome to book with whoever they want-I'm certainly bot touting for business (ehich is why I mailed Martin 1st)-of course if any wants to mail me that's up to them-I can hopefully provide some advice also for people-in the vein of the Mortgage Chap on this board.

Hope this clarifies things-look forward to being part of this board & any advice/help I can give!

All the best,

Chris

vanoonoo

great stuff chris - thanks so much for clearing that up - once again I hope I didn't cause offence as none was intended - happy repackaging

regards

V

TRAVELMAN_2

No problem!

It's just such a great way to trim costs too...the ATOL bit is a bit boring but is important from a financial protection point of view.

Long & short of it is-that the savings are huge! The haggling bit IS relavent-especially if you have a fairly high value holiday,but the packaging bit is good & cheaper.

Another thing that is great-no blasted coaches! I treated my other 1/2 to a 4 nighter in Gran Canaria b4 Xmas & booked a private taxi-the fact that you are straight out & in a car is great-it meant I could make full use of my time.

My other bug-bear is 'under-occupancy' supps.They do NOT exist-as the Tour Op's pay per unit-it's just profiteering in my view!

Lets hope we can all save money!

Chris

payless

My other bug-bear is 'under-occupancy' supps.They do NOT exist-as the Tour Op's pay per unit-it's just profiteering in my view!    

although if (after including profit margin)  flights cost £200 each and accom for 4 costs £400 for the week
if only 2 going they can't just charge £300 each ,

I have been "self packaging" my holidays for the last 8 yrs (also had 2 value packaged  holidays in that time)
since buying a timeshare (not my best purchase but.. worked out OK , and got me into habit of booking seprately even if not using t/s ) and no problems yet- although some of the packages now are well priced also.
( says a sad Mytravel shareholder)

Notice expedia now doing the combined pricing of flights and hotel on same search - thats a good idea.

Travelman do you work for yurself, for place via a larger firm? - a group of us  looked at the Dove package a while back, but could not get the right answers

signed- the mortgage chap

TRAVELMAN_2

:)Hi Payless-sorry-what is 'The Dove package?!'

I take your point re: under-occ supps, but I know the true rates for some of the units-the under-occs are grossly inflated in most cases!

To answer your question I'm self-employed (done this for 7 years now), work from home but am part of the United Co-Op travel Group. Beauty of this is that we don't have to 'push our own' (there is a word for this but it escapes me!)-some of the High Street Agents are owned by Tour Op's &-suprise suprise-usually that Tour Op is offered 1st! I'm not saying all are like this but draw your own conclusions!

The Expedia thing is good BUT although it shows flights & accom. together it does not mean it's an ATOL package-just shows you both together. The benefits of ATOL are very boring to talk about BUT it does mean that the packager becomes the Tour Op-so financially you're safe & also if there was a problem with accomodation, etc...its up to the agent to sort for you (& it costs no more).

Many of my friends use Expedia, Easyjet, etc...but it's not until something happens that you realise the benefits of the ATOL.

Rant over!!

payless

Dove is a home working scheme- ( advertsied on internet/ sunday paers) you pay a one off licence (around £300-£400), and then they allow you to market under their Atol (or is it Abta licence) - you call in (or probably comouter link) to their booking system, and keep % (think it was 45% ) of gross profit loaded on top of net prices.

What i could not see was how competitive their prices were - or if they were actually adding in own margin before giving us "net" rates.

A group of us thought of buying a licenece just book our own deals, with possibility of marketing it wider later - never took off , so can't say if it was any good.

think you are right about self packages, and yes would suggest it worth anyone looking at all 3 routes
(self, packaged, ATOL package) to see which is most competitive / feel secure with.

Personally I have always been happy with my self packaged deals, with the protection of only paying a small deposit- and even then using a credit card . suppose something might go wrong some day but touch wood... and the savings to date have been massive.

TRAVELMAN_2

:)Hi payless!

Similar type of thing, but the 30/45% commision is a percentage of the gross commision, NOT a mark-up.

The company i work for, Instant Holidays, is part of Future travel which in turn is part of United Co-Op travel group, & they were the 1st company to do homeworking (they started 8 years ago). having done a few years in Call Centres (which I HATED as you have no time to chat to your customers & REALLY search!) this seemed an ideal opportunity for me to build a client bank/business-doing something I enjoy.

The Dove thing you mentioned would, somewhere state that you had to have at least 2 years experience in the last 5 in an ABTA travel Agency-this is a rule I think on homeworking.

The major advantage of packaging through an ATOL agent is the accomodation. Beleive me, in July/August if a Hotelier gets a better offer from passing trade they WILL 'overbook'-if you are a family arriving with kids at 4am this is a nightmare! If done through ATOL the Travel Agent is now also your Tour Operator-so within their terms & conditions they HAVE to help or find you an alternative!

All the best,

Chris

payless

Sounds a similiar setup
their paperwork  said 45% of gross commission ( but also allowed you to mark up prices if wish)
But as I said could not clarify a few finer points- and we lost interest
No mention at all of needing experience!! - although I can see it would be an issue if you did not know what you were talking about - albeit it was a group of 5 of us that were initially looking at it for our own use ( once the beers flowed talked about employing someone to run it as a business)

can see you point about overbooking, although protected or not it would still not be nice to be "bumped"- or are you saying they would no bump someone via an agent? otherwise does your place run a 24hr helpline

TRAVELMAN_2

Hi payless-must be going senile (!) missed your last point.

By doing a package under ATOL all the companies we use have a local office/rep/contact number & we also have a 24 hour contact too.

All the best,

Chris