After becoming a Dad last year I've had the great pleasure of realising the pain I've got coming with the expense of having a holiday in a few years.
We all know travelling during the summer holidays is more expensive -- Travelzoo estimates the cost is typically around 40% higher than outside school summer-holiday dates. The best deals always seem to be in term time, which means families with school-aged children and teachers have less access to affordable holidays. In many cases, families take their children out of school for a few days in order to get cheaper travel prices, and traditionally schools have allowed some flexibility around this. However, things are about to get even harder. From September this year, the law will change, obliging schools to decline holiday requests and enforce fines on parents who take their children out of school during term time.
According to a survey we conducted recently with My Family Club, a website dedicated to saving families time, stress and money, 50% of parents admitted that they had taken children out of school for a holiday to avoid high prices.
Travelzoo does not condone taking children out of school for holidays; however, we believe a more creative solution must be out there to help alleviate what we are calling the "Parent Trap."
From a personal perspective as a father and in a professional capacity as someone who has worked in the travel industry for many years, I have decided to start a campaign via an online petition to lobby the UK government to consider suspending or reducing Airport Passenger Duty (APD) during the six weeks of the school summer-holiday period. This is one simple way to help reduce the price of family holidays. APD on a typical holiday to a longhaul destination adds at least £350 to the travel bill for a family of four.
Price will always go up in summer but it seems that some holiday breaks have no morals with the hike. I was looking at Sandy Balls in the New Forest but the price jump up 68% from £419 £1549 per week within 2 weeks of the summer break starting.
Read the full article here and please sign the petition.