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DTI responds to summer holiday rip-off reports
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has responded to reports that consumer affairs minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, had ordered travel industry bosses to reduce the high cost of summer family holidays.
Confirming that a meeting between Sutcliffe and the travel industry did take place, a spokesperson for the DTI said the meeting was called to discuss a number of issues, including the cost of summer family holidays.
They said that, while Sutcliffe is concerned about the family holidays issues, it was not the case that the minister had sent the travel industry bosses away to ‘sort out’ the problem and report back.
Nor did Sutcliffe ‘order’ the Office of Fair Trading to investigate the industry, as the OFT is an independent organisation and Sutcliffe’s power does not extend that far. The meeting itself, which has bee reported in the national press today, took place over two months ago – before Easter.
Those at the meeting discussed examples of good practice in other areas of the industry and how it could be potentially applied to summer holiday pricing.
There are currently no further meetings planned between Sutcliffe and travel industry representatives, although the spokesperson said that it is ‘very likely’ that the two will meet again in the future.
However, from late July onwards, parents booking a holiday can end up paying at least double the price or even up to 170 per cent more to take a family break during school holidays. Parents can also now be fined £100 if they take their children out of school without permission.
Another option currently being considered is splitting the school year into six terms.
Meanwhile, travel industry representatives maintain that it is bad business not to charge higher prices during peak seasons – if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be long before they went out of business altogether.
A spokesperson from ABTA said: “The industry is incredibly competitive, so if people feel things are too expensive they’ll go elsewhere. If that’s the case we know we’ve got our prices wrong.
“We don’t know the effect that a six-term year would have on the travel industry, but if its staggered throughout the year, the crisis would naturally flatten out a bit so we won’t see these big peaks and troughs, although some people argue that you may see more.
“We are already involved in many family-focused initiatives, such as early bird discounts, free child places, buy one holiday get two free and price matching, so I suspect that, if there’s encouragement from the Minister to promote more family-focused initiatives, we’ll possibly do that.”