Discount campaigns in travel agencies are no longer having the desired effect, as our front-page survey shows.
The public has wised up to the tricks of the travel trade and simply don’t trust operators and agents when they bang on about offering best-ever deals.
It’s not surprising. How on earth can you effectively communicate a message which says “book now and you’ll get a big discount on some family holidays, although of course we may increase that discount next week, and if you’re flexible and don’t need to travel during school holidays or want free kids places, then you could take a chance and wait because there are always some places which don’t sell very well and we’ll have to discount them at the last minute, particularly during May and June”?
We all know the big companies talk to each other regularly – one of the major operator’s senior executives told me the other day he was off to have dinner with his opposite number at another company, and that’s hardly a rare occurrence.
So isn’t it time they got their heads together and stopped offering such high discounts?
Better still, they could ask their highly paid marketeers to come up with a more original campaign to enticecustomers. What about something that focuses on thequality and service which they repeatedly claim to offer?
Jeremy Skidmore – editor