How competition benefits the consumer in more ways than you think!

When we think of competition, particularly in the consumer sense of the word, there is an unconscious assumption that we’re talking about price. Stiff competition certainly has a habit of regulating pricing and tends to ensure that no one player in the marketplace loses the run of themselves and starts raising their prices. Competition also benefits consumers in many other ways — some tangible and some not so tangible. In the case of the former,

These numbers may surprise you!

When people find out that I work in the travel industry one of the questions that I invariably get asked is ‘What’s popular this year?’ When I always reply ‘Spain’, they seem visibly disappointed as if they had expected me to cite someplace far more exotic like Mexico or Mozambique! The reality is that most people don’t like to move too far outside their comfort zone and so the hardy annuals such as Spain, Portugal,

The Success story that is MSC Cruises!

When Captain Gianluigi Aponte purchased his first, small ship in Belgium in 1970, just as globalisation was taking off which would soon be fed by the containerisation revolution, little could he have imagined that the small company that he had just founded in Brussels would one day come to employ more than 60,000 people located in over 150 countries around the world. That company was MSC Group, parent of MSC Cruises! (more…)

What budgets reveal about how much we spend.

There have been several occasions in my life when money was tight and I had to literally count the pennies to make ends meet. Two of the things I had to discipline myself to do was work only with cash (the rationale being when it was gone, it was gone!) and record details of every single penny that was spent. What was interesting about those episodes was how easily money got frittered away in small,

Timely Advice

    It’s that time of year again when most people’s minds turn to New Year resolutions, the next credit card statement and of course the inevitable where to go on this year’s holiday and, equally importantly — when to book it? Many people still mistakenly think that if you are flexible in when you can take your annual leave and are also a bit of a gambler then it is always worth your while

Where to go in 2017?

I know that Christmas is just around the corner and your head is more than likely focused on ordering the turkey, cleaning the house from top to bottom and trying to buy that last present or two for those difficult-to-please relatives of yours but let’s be honest — as soon as the whole hullabaloo is over, thoughts invariably turn to ‘Where are we going to go on holidays this year?’ I’m doing you a favour

2016 is not the year to hold off booking your holiday arrangements!

It is part of the human condition to want to try and beat the system and the travel industry is no different in that respect. Every year, intending travellers tend to look into their respective crystal balls to find out when they should book their holiday arrangements. They reason (not unreasonably) that since commodities such as airline seats and hotel rooms are essentially perishable products, it makes more sense to leave making such arrangements until

Now that’s big!

As Irish consumers begin to vary their travel diet more and more, some of them are starting to discover the joys of cruising. Long considered the preserve of the `newly-wed, over-fed and almost dead', cruising still suffers from an image problem — mostly, it must be said — in the eyes of those who have never stepped aboard a cruise ship. The fact of the matter is that there are as many cruise products as

Choose your holiday based on value for money rather than price alone!

It's perfectly understandable that intending holidaymakers should compare prices between competing products, destinations or suppliers when researching whom they should book their next travel arrangements with. It's all too easy though to lose sight of the most important criteria of all — which one represents the best value for money? Everyone is familiar with the old saying 'You get what you pay for' and rarely is that more true than when making travel arrangements. Because the true cost of a holiday

The art of getting a quote that is both competitive in price and relevant to your needs starts with gathering all the right information about what you want to do (or think you want to do!).