The following from Sundays Observer. Says it all!
The name's to blame
Jeannette Hyde
Saturday May 25 2002
The Guardian
How does Mytravel chairman David Crossland have the gall to blame 11 September for the fact his company still has more than one million package holidays left to sell this summer? He says bookings picked up in January and February this year, but fell away after Easter as families held back from booking in the hope of picking up a bargain.
Now, how many people do you know who have held back from booking their main summer holiday in the Med this year due to 11 September? I don't know any. I know the odd person who still doesn't fancy travelling to the US at the moment because they are scared by terrorism, but nobody seems to be holding back from the Balearic Islands. Funnily enough, rivals Thomson and First Choice claim their bookings are doing well.
How the City can accept such absurd excuses for a company failing to sell holidays to the Balearics and the Costa del Sol, I don't know. Why isn't anyone asking Mr Crossland if the small matter of a rebranding exercise from the household name Airtours to the completely nebulous Mytravel label in February this year has anything to do with it? Say the word Mytravel to most people (try it on your friends) and most haven't got a clue what you are talking about. Everyone I know still calls it Airtours - even the ones I know who have recently booked with the company. Three out of four companies suffer on the stock market follow ing a name change, so why isn't Airtours admitting it?
To change a major brand name to one that no one knows on the back of 11 September is more likely to be the reason for the company's unsuccessful sales.
The other hugely obvious reason Mytravel is proving unpopular is the massive competition it is facing from the low-cost airlines such as Easyjet, Ryanair and Go which now offer cheap flights to the Med. The fact that Mytravel has announced that it will launch its own mini low-cost airline in October says one thing: low-cost airlines are taking too much of its business. It's a very obvious case of: 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.'
Mr Crossland, admit it. Your new brand is weak and your package holidays have gone out of fashion. This week, I booked a holiday to Ibiza. I booked the flights on Go's website and tried to find a hotel that had space from a range of guide books. I only managed to get seats because Go had put on extra flights in the school summer holidays to meet extra demand, and, after a huge amount of phon ing around, found a place to stay. Most independent hotels were fully booked.
The flights are at civilised times of day, the total price of the holiday is less than the cost of a package and we can go on a Tuesday and return on a Sunday without the claustrophobia of being locked into a seven- or 14-night package. I'm not surprised Go is running out of flights and the independent hotels are fully booked while the package holidays are still piled high on Mytravel's shelves.
Anyway, the good news is that with a million packages left to shift, there should be a few bargains kicking around this summer.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited