Well after remembering I owned a blog I went on holiday and forgot again, after a few tweaks to upgrade bits of it (still loads to do) I thought id do my first real post of the year.
Being involved in travel I thought id have a stab at posting something useful. This years not been a fun one with XL collapsing along with Freedom Direct, Find-Rooms, Reservahotelonline, Xcapewithus and numerous other small high street travel agents – consumer confidence has been shattered.
The Euro at the beginning of the year was as close as matters to 1 for 1. To you and me this means things are a bit more when you go away, rather than 140 EUR for you 100 GBP you only get 100 EUR. Imagine you’re a company that deals with travel products, lets say hotels ad you have an invoice for 10m EUR and your paying in GBP, an invoice that was at 7.1m GBP has just become 10m GBP if you haven’t bought ant euros at the old rate. Currency hedging is one of the main reasons a few of the hotel only companies went into administration.
It also forces the price up, as any hotel in Europe will charge in euros. So they may have a room at 50 EUR per night, which was a nett price of 35 GBP which then suddenly rocketed to 50 GBP!
So with the collapse of XL we’ve lost a load of flights, and if you can get anywhere the hotel prices have gone up, if your lucky enough that your booking agents been paying their invoices and the hotel actually has a room reserved for you!
But this was all 6 months ago, where are we now? Well everyone predicting a lates market meaning that customers haven’t yet booked their main August break and are leaving it late to get a deal. Nobody really knows if this is the case, time will tell.
The CAA are also trying to flex their muscles regarding companies operating without an ATOL but selling ‘holidays’ by trying to bang up Travel Republics MD Kane Pirie. I wont event try and explain the difference between a holiday and a flight + hotel as they’ll probably come after me too for getting the wording wrong.
As an aside, from an alpharooms.com point of view and a bit of an unofficial programme update im incredibly proud of all our top affiliates and have the up most respect for them. This year has been the hardest yet with margins very tight and we had to re-asses the commission paid to top affiliates – commission cuts were needed. Not one single affiliate complained, sent their traffic elsewhere or complained – every single one understood the challenges and helped us through when other companies were failing so a personal thank you to all those affiliates.
Well after remembering I owned a blog I went on holiday and forgot again, after a few tweaks to upgrade bits of it (still loads to do) I thought id do my first real post of the year.
Being involved in travel I thought id have a stab at posting something useful. This years not been a fun one with XL collapsing along with Freedom Direct, Find-Rooms, Reservahotelonline, Xcapewithus and numerous other small high street travel agents – consumer confidence has been shattered.
The Euro at the beginning of the year was as close as matters to 1 for 1. To you and me this means things are a bit more when you go away, rather than 140 EUR for you 100 GBP you only get 100 EUR. Imagine you’re a company that deals with travel products, lets say hotels ad you have an invoice for 10m EUR and your paying in GBP, an invoice that was at 7.1m GBP has just become 10m GBP if you haven’t bought ant euros at the old rate. Currency hedging is one of the main reasons a few of the hotel only companies went into administration.
It also forces the price up, as any hotel in Europe will charge in euros. So they may have a room at 50 EUR per night, which was a nett price of 35 GBP which then suddenly rocketed to 50 GBP!
So with the collapse of XL we’ve lost a load of flights, and if you can get anywhere the hotel prices have gone up, if your lucky enough that your booking agents been paying their invoices and the hotel actually has a room reserved for you!
But this was all 6 months ago, where are we now? Well everyone predicting a lates market meaning that customers haven’t yet booked their main August break and are leaving it late to get a deal. Nobody really knows if this is the case, time will tell.
The CAA are also trying to flex their muscles regarding companies operating without an ATOL but selling ‘holidays’ by trying to bang up Travel Republics MD Kane Pirie. I wont event try and explain the difference between a holiday and a flight + hotel as they’ll probably come after me too for getting the wording wrong.
As an aside, from an alpharooms.com point of view and a bit of an unofficial programme update im incredibly proud of all our top affiliates and have the up most respect for them. This year has been the hardest yet with margins very tight and we had to re-asses the commission paid to top affiliates – commission cuts were needed. Not one single affiliate complained, sent their traffic elsewhere or complained – every single one understood the challenges and helped us through when other companies were failing so a personal thank you to all those affiliates.
