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Simon Calder: ski holiday left me baffled by today’s packages

Simon Calder, travel editor, The IndependentThe biggest surprise on my skiing trip was the (presumably Scottish) man who, at 4.30pm last Saturday, skied through the village of Katschberg in Austria wearing a kilt.

Every aspect of skiing, from travelling on drag lifts to hurtling down a black run must be considerably less comfortable in full Highland dress.

More puzzlement came from analysing the components of a package holiday – in this case, a Neilson skiing trip, which I had booked eight months earlier. Why, when I booked, was I not offered a small incentive (such as a discount of 0.5% per month) to settle the bill in full at the time of booking?

Instead, back-office staff at Neilson’s parent company, Thomas Cook, had to send out a reminder with eight weeks to go, and I had the mild irritation of one
extra transaction.

Next, at check-in for the Thomas Cook Airlines flight at Gatwick, I had to hand over paper tickets – for the first time in 18 months at any airport, anywhere.

Why, in this fast-evolving world, in which IATA is putting an end to paper tickets at the start of June, should a carrier still get involved with this element of bureaucracy?

Check-in, incidentally, had opened three hours ahead of a 2.30pm flight. Almost everyone had checked in by 1pm, and gone airside to eat lunch. Exactly what nobody needed at 3.30pm was another meal, and that was exactly what they got – a hot lunch, served hurriedly during an 80-minute flight.

The resort, Kirschberg, and the Falkensteiner Hotel Cristallo, were both impeccable, and in the final week of the ski season the slopes were as empty as a baggage carousel at Terminal 5.

But one more mystery of modern package tourism awaited when the coach from the resort rolled in to Salzburg airport with half a dozen others. In the ensuing scrum, I had plenty of time to ponder why, when almost everyone is in a family group, each flight should have one desk for hand-baggage only – which typically mothers and their children would use while fathers queue up with the family’s baggage, comparing notes on amazing downhill runs completed, beers drunk and injuries sustained.

No doubt long-established tour operators can come up with countless reasons why things are as they are. But reluctance to change poses as much risk to a mature industry as tackling a black run wearing a kilt.

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