The Co-Operative Travel Warns of False-Economy Holidays

The Co-Operative Travel Warns of False-Economy Holidays

Attempting to save money by ‘downsizing’ your holiday might not be such a good idea after all. According to The Co-operative Travel, cutting your holiday down from a week to 4 days, or down from 14 days to 10 can often work out to be a false economy, not necessarily getting you cheaper holidays.  

The research is based on 3.2 million holidays that took place between 2005 and 2011, and shows that four night holidays had grown in popularity by 50%, while the figure for 10-day holidays had grown by 162%. The price per night of these holidays, however, was found to be much higher than their traditional counterparts of a week or 14 days.

Illustrative of this is the fact that a holiday for 14 days will have an average cost-per-night of £65.19, compared to an average cost-per-night of £82.70 for a 10 night holiday.

For a seven day break you could expect to pay an average of £74.71 per night, in comparison to £112.59 for four night holiday.

The director of retail distribution for The Co-operative Travel, Trevor Davis, said: ‘For a number of years now, travel agents have had the ability to offer totally flexible holiday bookings, giving customers the opportunity to tailor a trip to meet their exact requirements.

‘Many people have seen this as an opportunity to try to make their holiday budget stretch further, shaving a few days off their break in an effort to reduce costs.

‘This saves you money on living expenses or extras, such as a hire car, but may mean that you’re not getting the best value for money as far as your actual booking is concerned.

‘The mainstream holiday industry is still based on weekly blocks, with hotels and flight capacity based around set 'changeover' days. For this reason anything that breaks with the norm is often penalised with higher prices.

‘We’d encourage anyone looking at downsizing their holiday to ask their travel agent to also provide the cost of a seven- or 14-night break. People can then look at the per-night costs and work out whether they’re saving as much as they first thought.’