Size matters - travel systems can be too big!

11 UK based travel companies have been fined (about 5000 GBP, or 10,000 USD) each for not showing prices on their websites that include non-optional extras.

ABTA gave 12 weeks notice that all businesses had to get into shape before they would be held accountable. This, according to Travel Weekly, expired in May.

None of this surprises me

Firstly lets look at the time of the year - right in late summer sales (for UK departing holiday makers). Not an ideal time for any travel company to “move first” to increase their lead in prices - especially if the fines are that small.

Secondly it is not trivial to add non-optional extras to upfront prices “just like that”. Historically travel was sold through highstreet travel agencies - and these agencies were open during the day (and weekends) - leaving reservation systems unused overnight. These systems would then process millions and millions of price combinations overnight - ready for the next days trading using precalculated prices. This processing could take hours (often 4-6 hours of full time processing for large companies - on very powerful and expensive servers).

With the increase of the importance of the Internet as a distribution channel, trading time windows have extended - and tour operators have had to take bookings from early in the morning right through to after midnight (and let people check availability on a 24 hour basis).

This leaves price processing to be done in an ever shortening window (or using a secondary server infrastructure). If you add into the mix that the price calculations now MUST include all non-optional extras - there is no way that many of the larger travel companies could actually get their holidays or flights back on sale in the morning- because processing wouldn’t have completed!

Sometimes it is nice to have a small tour operator where you don’t have quite so much data….. 

If you want to be notified next time something is published sign up for email alerts or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thank you for reading!