The last two weeks have seen some stability return to the market. The prices have not been very good but the demand has strengthened.
We are running at full capacity now, in the region of 1,000 committed flight seats a week, and the weeks ending the May 30 and June 6 have been as near full as we could get.
Certainly, the fact that the Balkan crisis has been off the front pages has helped a great deal. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is what it’s all about I’m afraid.
Now that the first shock is over, the bombing reports have become tedious and it is all beginning to seem much further away than it was three or four weeks ago.
Human nature is so predictable – the lure of low prices can tempt people to visit a destination which was ‘risky’ when it was selling at full price! Let’s hope a face-saving compromise in the Balkans is reached by all parties in the near future.
The dumping of capacity has been on an enormous scale, but it is getting very tight from now until the middle of June, far tighter than it was at this time last year. It’s currently a matter of trying to maintain a good service at a time when demand has taken a sharp upturn.
A late-booking, poor year with lower prices ironically needs more staff. A steady flow is easier to handle than sudden surges in demand. But, this is the time that a good tour operator can really shine.
It is vital to get through the next six weeks with as few errors as possible. It’s very easy to make mistakes now and it’s also very easy to get ratty on the phone. All the while, faxes, telephone calls and e-mails just pour in from every corner of the globe.
It’s the ‘stop-sales’ notices from hotels that worry me most. If one of these gets buried under piles of paper and is not actioned, then the repercussions at a later date can be quite horrendous.
No matter how computerised you are, basic errors still lurk in the wings, ready to appear just when you thought everything was running smoothly.
What plagues us more than anything else are the number of changes to bookings we are constantly asked to make. Adding car hire at a later stage is a real pain, especially if travel documents have already been sent.
We make so little on car hire that it costs more to make the booking, reprint the invoice and post it than what the little extra commission will be. Yet, when you ask for a £25 amendment fee per person, the request is greeted with horror. “But we’re adding to the booking value” is the cry. It’s like the notion that a tour operator makes more on a £1,000 holiday than on one for £500. The £1,000 standard hotel holiday to, say, Cyprus has very little margin. Because all tour operators feature the same hotel off very similar flights, the mark-up has been cut to the bone.
On the other hand, a holiday at half the price based on committed accommodation and unique to a particular tour operator can earn much more for the tour operator. The mark-up can be twice as high and the agent’s commission obviously less on £500 rather than on £1,000. The agent makes far more than the operator on expensive holidays. Nothing is what is seems in the travel industry!