It's a dreaded question on any flight, “so how much did you pay?” When booking a package holiday, the aim's to get the same for less; there's a lot more to it than just ‘book late'; this is a five step plan to haggle package holiday costs way below the cheapest advertised price. The savings can be huge, one MoneySaver who "had no idea this would work" followed it and reports £600 off a holiday to Crete, by haggling with just three travel agents.
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Package v DIY Holidays |
Package holidays are all-in-ones, where the tour operator provides flights, connections and accommodation together. The modern DIY holiday trend means many avoid them and arrange it themselves on the web.
Yet, as a rough rule of thumb, package holidays are cheapest for a week or two in the sun, on the piste, or in a traditional holiday destination, while DIY wins for less visited venues, multi-stop breaks and short city breaks. If DIY is for you read the Cheap Flight Finding article instead, which also includes details of how to get cheap hotels.
The other package holiday benefit is, unlike DIY, tour operators should have ATOL protection (always check), which means if the holiday company fails, either you'll be given a refund or if you're away, can complete your trip. With DIY holidays if one of the components fail, you're unlikely to get your money back.
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Step 1: The later or earlier the booking the better |
Either the later the better…
Booking late is the cheapest way to get a package. If you can hold off eight to ten weeks before departure, or later still, then the bargains flood in.
However, it means choice is limited, so it's only for those with flexibility about when and where to travel to. If you want specific facilities, such as children's playgroups, then booking late gambles a cheap price for the wrong destination.
Or the earlier the better….
Ten years ago, tour operators started introducing early booking bonuses, meaning book at least nine months ahead and you get the holiday cheaper. For example, typical early booking savings for Summer 2007 are £100 off per couple or 2 weeks for the price of one.
While these bonuses aren't close to the fierce late bargain prices, you can get exactly what you want and it's substantially cheaper than booking roughly nine to two months before departure.
Early booking bonuses stem back to 1995, an annus horriblis for tour operators. Imagine the scene, the Chief Executive berating his minions for overestimating summer demand, leaving them drowning in unsold holidays and flogging them for next to nothing. So when he asks, “how do we make people book early so we can easily predict demand?”, some bright spark pipes up, “make it cheaper.”
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Step 2: Travel agents & tour operators |
Tour operators make holidays, travel agents sell them; often this is confused. True, many times they are both subsidiaries of the same company, yet the distinction is crucial.
Packages are effectively commodity goods. Many different travel agents will try to sell the same tour operator's holiday, but they don't all sell it for the same price. Thus to slice holiday costs to the bone, decide which package you want then aim to source it cheaper. It works for any package, though the biggest impact is with late deals bought from the major chains.
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Step 3: Find the holiday |
Now find the holiday you want, having worked out what you can afford (More About Working Out What You Can Afford). Savvy picking helps keep the price down from the start.
Location and timing are crucial
Take a holiday when others can't, such as before school holidays in May and June, to family destinations like Florida, and the prices are cheaper.
The same's true if you venture to once en vogue mass destinations that are no longer chic, where hotel capacity is unquenched by off-the-boil demand, or visit areas where some would worry, possibly unnecessarily, such as Israel's Eilat; hot all year round and reasonably far from most of the troubles.
Source a specific holiday
For me the package holiday doyen isn't the web, but TV's Teletext, primarily because it's a huge list of different travel agents' adverts, though grabbing brochures for likely destinations helps too. However if you fancy a quick scan of what's available before you haggle then a site like TravelSupermarket* isn't bad for benchmarking.
Now speak to a travel agent or two to see what's available. Once you've found where you want, within your price range, write down all the info; flight times, hotel destination (or minimum star if it's non-named), what's included, the tour operator, everything you can get.
If you don't have Teletext, the Sunday newspapers often list discount travel agents, and you can try the web using multi-agent sites like http://www.teletext.co.uk/. Alternatively venture into a high street travel agent and discuss what's available, though it's unlikely you'll actually book through them, so to be fair don't take too much of their time.
One final note, it's almost never worth getting travel insurance through a travel agent: sometimes they can make more profit on the insurance than the holiday and specific insurers are much cheaper. See Cheapest Travel Insurance article.
Putting it into practice
I'm going through the process as I write, though tragically it's only for the sake of research. My destination is a fortnight's holiday for two to Cuba, staying at a 3 star named hotel, leaving three weeks after the date of my call.
The Teletext advertised price was £530 per person, compared to a rough brochure price of £770. After calling it transpired the airport transfers in Cuba and plane food were £15 on top, a total of £560 including booking fee. These supposed ‘extras' are almost always split out with late bookings, so always check.
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Step 4: Haggle for your holiday |
Now the holiday's picked, it's a game to get it cheaper and here my Teletext bias becomes clear. Firstly you can't haggle on the web, but more so Teletext divides agents into destination lists. So scan its pages and note down the phone numbers of all your destination's specialist holiday companies. Remember prices and availability will change if you take too long over this.
For those who don't have teletext, here's a list of Telesales Travel Agents, who typically advertise there, and their telephone numbers, though using Teletext itself will give a much wider choice. It's it's also worth taking a peek at TravelSupermarket* for a full range too. Then call one up and ask it if it can beat the quote you have. Try to negotiate in price per person not total cost, as then any discount you're given seems less significant to them than it really is.
To speed up the technique, you could shave a little off the price, but don't go too far, as they'll often simply ask for the name of the agent and call it. My price was £560, so I quoted £550 and it came back with £530.
Repeating this process with three others the price soon dropped to £495 per person, after that no one else would budge.
Get travel agents to bid for your business: "Beat My Quote?"
The MoneySavingExpert Forum's Travel Board is populated with many savvy savers and Travel Agents who understand MoneySaving. As many of them said to me they can undercut most high street offers, I set up a special Beat My Quote thread which allows you to post the best quote you’ve been given and see if any of the travel agents there can beat it (there's no commercial link between those agents and the site). This is a good way to try and finesse the pirce down at the final stage. If you're a travel agent reading this, feel free to quote in the thread, it's open to all.
It's not as quick as calling, and there are no guarantees but the people responding understand that you are a MoneySaver looking for a seriously reduced price. If you're a travel agent reading this, feel free to quote in the thread, it's open to all.
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Step 5: Finessing the final pounds |
Now we've hit the price floor, there are a few more tricks, though if time's an issue you could stop here. At this point, shift to those agents whose adverts include “we aim to beat any quote” promises. These include Co-op Travelcare Direct, HolidayHoliday, and Travel Economy. You'll also find travel agents in the travel section of the Chat Forum, who may try to beat quotes, though always check they're ATOL bonded.
Of course they won't always beat the quote. This time round I could only shave another £10 per person off, still not bad.
After that to be absolutely sure, call the tour operator's own direct booking arm, Airtours*, Thomas Cook*, First Choice all have them. For my trip, it couldn't. And finally, just to try and be fair, you may want to return to the original travel agent that helped you to see if it'll match the price, and regain your custom.
Report Your Successes/Failures With This Technique
All this took just an afternoon, though I was actually on the phone for no more than forty five minutes, there's sometimes a need to wait for the agents to call back with prices.
The savings over this short time are huge. At brochure cost it would've been £1,540, the initial late price was £1,120 but the haggling brought that down to a final £970, a further £150 off just for making a few calls.
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Holiday Haggling | ||
| Total | Saving | |
| Brochure Price | £1,540 | - |
| Standard Late Price | £1,120 | £420 |
| Haggled Down Price | £990 | £550 |
| Price Beater Price | £970 | £570 |
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Travel agents' response to this |
Travel agents vented their spleen, letters were sent and the trade magazine devoted pages to it. Apparently showing people how to cut their costs is ‘immoral' and I have devil horns. I believe many simply didn't like the idea of having their margins cut and responded accordingly. Read Their Views And My Response.
Where I do have some sympathy is with independent tour operators, who source and put together packages themselves. Yet in this case there isn't a ‘commodity' good impact, you can't simply buy the same thing elsewhere anyway.
To be fair to travel agents, it's worth trying to minimise the amount of their time you use when originally sourcing the holiday you want, if you're going to buy it cheaper elsewhere anyway. It's one of the reasons I favour getting brochures and calling up the phone specialists, who deal with this all the time rather than actually walking into an agency.
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