MyTravel gets picked on because a lot of people lost a lot of money with their shares. This is also somewhat true of the other operators but the story with MyTravel was certainly "juicier" because of the Arthur Andersen connection.
I saw a similar article in one of the other papers a couple of days ago but it compared Thomson holidays vs DIY holidays and it came to a similar conclusion, so it isn't just MyTravel that are getting a raw deal, its really any big company. However, they were comparing "brochure prices" vs internet deals with low-cost carriers etc. Well, who ever pays full brochure price for a holiday these days? Everyone knows that the brochure price is artificially inflated so that the tour operators can give the impression of big discounts in their "summer sales". This is just the way the market works and when Thomson tried to change that a couple of years back they got their fingers burnt. The paying customer wanted to think they were getting a "deal" regardless of what it was they actually paid in the end. Never mind that the brochure price was lowered to a realistic value.
It was pretty obvious that it was a slow news week last week. But now Al-Q has reared its head (supposedly) again they are more interested in airplanes and missiles this week. Next week it will be something else. SARS will be back to kill us all. Or maybe we are all going to die in poverty because our pensions are crap. Or maybe George Bush will decide to invade Syria. Or West Nile virus will reach Europe. There's always something just around the corner.
Just ignore the press - they are always wrong.
Lazlo