The Elite Travel Group is to launch a price-match scheme to prevent operators from undercutting the consortium’s members with online discounting on direct sales.
Chairman Wayne Darrock said the scheme is already being used by its sister consortium Advantage, which introduced it around five years ago, and now has up to six tour operators known for discounting heavily online signed up to it.
The deal means the operators give agents the same price on a holiday as advertised online. Darrock is hoping Elite’s worst-offending suppliers will sign up to it in time for the January peaks market.
Darrock said: “It is a good scheme and something we’re looking at and want to extend to our tour operators.”
He said both consortia are also reviewing deals they have with the 82 operators that only work with one of the two consortia, which announced plans to merge commercial departments last month.
Darrock admitted some operators could lose their deals with one of the consortia but refused to speculate on how many.