Agents doubt Tui discounting claims

As Travel Weekly revealed last week, the operator has experimented with ‘price discrimination’ on its website, offering bigger discounts only to those customers who click on promotional buttons.

The pricing trial, which was launched at the end of last year and is being assessed, was inspired by the tale of a Chicago prostitute.

Tui UK and Ireland managing director Dermot Blastland said the prostitute analogy was used to illustrate how customers could be charged according to their ability to pay.

However, agents said they had seen little sign of Tui reining in its discounts.

Bailey’s Travel owner Chris Bailey told how last week he had recommended a £3,600 Thomson holiday to a customer only for him to return to the shop with a discount from the Tui website that Bailey could not match.

“They risk alienating us and possibly increasing our inclination to switch-sell in future, thereby undermining their own business,”
Bailey said.

Travel Designers managing director Nick McKay said he did not want to be lectured about pricing by a firm that, through some of its divisions, sold below the net price it offered agents.

He said: “I’m pleased that Blastland wants to stop all this stupid discounting, but can he actually do it and allow us agents to make a decent mark-up?”

Mike Greenacre, The Co-operative Travel managing director, welcomed the move and urged the trade to focus on value rather than low prices.

A Tui spokesman said: “The trial is focusing on adjusting the level of discount available on selected products and analysing subsequent consumer behaviours.

“This could, in the long term, result in lower levels of discounting, which we believe would be to the advantage of our own agents, as well as third parties.”