Tucan Currency Changes
Category: Overlanding Industry News, Tucan Travel | January 1, 2009 By adminTucan Travel are the latest to adjust prices due to currency fluctuation. However there will be no increases for clients who have already booked. The Australian Dollar prices have been increased by 15% whilst the US Dollar prices have decreased by 10% from Thursday 18 December 2008. For more detailed information click here. This follows Intrepid who at the end of November had warned of currency surcharges.
Update:
Tucan Travel are advising passengers to book by the 31st of Jan 2009 to avoid a price hike. ” Due to current exchange rates, Tucan Travel may need to increase our Group Tour prices by 10% or more in most currencies including GBP, CAD, AUD and NZD. We will be reviewing and publishing these increases at the end of January 2009 “
Tucan have said that there will be no increases for customers who have already booked, this is wrong, they have increased retrospectively prices for pre-booked customers, but are saying opposite on the website.
Hi there,
I’m Catrionna Grant, the communications coordinator for Tucan Travel. I’d just like to clarify our position.
In December 2008 when we published an increase in tour prices on our website, we made a guarantee that we would not make any increase to the tour price for clients who had already booked. The increase went into effect on 1 February 2009. As promised, we did not backdate this tour price increase for clients who had already booked with us. On that webpage it specifically stated that Local Payments remained as published in the current brochure as there were no further increases envisaged at that time.
However, as we have explained to our clients, our operational costs have increased by more than 33% since our prices were set in August last year, primarily due to currency exchange fluctuations. We have absorbed as much of this cost into the business as possible but the situation has become unsustainable. As per clause 6 of our booking conditions, we reserve the right to increase the Local Payment in the case of extreme currency fluctuations. It was a difficult decision for us to have to make but under these extraordinary circumstances we have had no choice but to pass an increase on to all clients.
We do understand that this change has an impact on our travellers and we have worked hard very to keep the increase to an absolute minimum. I trust this clarifies our position for you.