Regulating travel agencies

On July 5, Dr Simon Busuttil wrote about package tours prices excluding taxes in advertising. I agree with him (although it is only a trivial matter) but there is much more that needs to be regulated in this area.

First of all, tour leaders should be qualified and brochures describing the tours should be 100 per cent truthful.

When travellers decide on a particular tour, they pay 10 per cent on making their booking. Fair enough. Then travellers are obliged to pay in full six weeks before departure date (taxes, hotels, meals and excursions). It's like buying fish in the sea. The agencies can only make their position even safer, by cancelling the tour if there are less than 30 bookings.

A few days ago we returned from a package holiday in Ireland which cost my wife and I a little over Lm1,000 for a week's holiday. We visited places of no interest at all, except for window shopping. The few interesting places did not justify the cost. We went from Dublin to Cork, to find out that the hotel was not in Cork as stated but in an industrial area. It was impossible to walk to Cork, let alone Cork centre.

But the cherry on the cake was the last day. According to the programme we were to check out from the hotel in the afternoon; instead the group left at 10 a.m. for a four-hour drive to Dublin. The flight to Malta was at 2 the next morning. We had 16 hours to roam the streets. One can image the frustration, and fatigue. About 30 of the 40 people in the group were senior citizens.

We landed in Malta at 7 a.m. due to a delay.

I support Dr Busuttil's initiative to regulate this sector.