Tucan Travel Increases Local Payments
Category: Overlanding Travel News, Tucan Travel | May 25, 2009 By adminOn all Discovery Tours, Adventure Tours and Overland Expeditions departing from 1 June 2009. Tucan Travel place the blame on the currency fluctuations as reported back in January. They have or are making all those affected aware of the price increases either directly or through your travel agent. More details.
Tucan Travel are increasing their prices , they blame on currency fluctuations. Whils they represent on their website that they will not backdate increases to customers who have already booked, this actually appears to be misleading, as they increase the ‘compulsory local payment’ , not the tour part, but as this forms part of the total booking cost of the trip, you have no discretion but to pay it, even if you have pre-booked, and therefore is in direct conflict with what is being advertised.
Tucan Travel are increasing their prices , they blame on currency fluctuations. Whils they represent on their website that they will not backdate increases to customers who have already booked, this actually appears to be misleading, as they increase the ‘compulsory local payment’ , not the tour part, but as this forms part of the total booking cost of the trip, you have no discretion but to pay it, even if you have pre-booked, and therefore is in direct conflict with what is being advertised. Be careful if you make a booking as the price may rise sky high , not what you intended from a budget tour operator.
Hi there,
I’m Catrionna Grant, the communications coordinator for Tucan Travel. I’d just like to clarify our position for Sue.
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.