Category Archives: The Travel Business

Budget airline car hire ripoffs exposed (Malaga Airport car hire)

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At a time when budget airlines are increasingly being criticised over their ever-extending list of unavoidable extra charges, there is perhaps one area where they are being even more brazen, and this is when it comes to adding on a hire car to their flight booking process.

We looked at flights to Malaga from all the major budget airlines which offer flights from the UK to Spain, and this time compared the cost of the car hire for one week, rather than just looking at the cost of the flights to Malaga, which showed relatively little variance in price, even from different UK regional airports.

Out of six airlines we looked at, five included a car hire quote as part of the booking process, which customers had to opt out of in order to avoid booking through the airline’s partner. Jet2 was the only airline not to include an opt-out-only car hire booking quote, so this had to be looked up separately.

In most cases, the airlines have entered into an affiliate agreement with a major car hire provider — Hertz in the case of Aer Lingus and Ryanair, Europcar with easyJet and Avis with Flybe. In all of these four cases, the cost of a hire car was substantially more than the cost quoted using car hire comparison engines, with Aer Lingus working out at the most expensive at £312.80, a staggering 627% more than the cheapest price. Of the airlines which gave a direct booking option, Ryanair were the cheapest at £122.99, even though this was also booked through Hertz.

Meanwhile, the Bmibaby were by far the cheapest of the airlines which included car hire booking as part of the flight booking process, as they are powered by car hire comparison engine Cartrawler, who compare prices across a number of different car hire companies, instead of sticking to just one major brand.The price with Bmibaby was £67.48, but even this was still more than half as expensive again as the cheapest option.

Jet2 were the cheapest of the airlines we looked at, coming in at £51.06, and this was through their Jet2cars.com website, which is powered by Carhire3000.

AIRLINE PARTNER COST
RYANAIR HERTZ £122.99
EASYJET EUROPCAR £129.00
AER LINGUS HERTZ £312.80
BMIBABY CARTRAWLER £67.48
FLYBE AVIS £157.98
JET2 CARHIRE3000 £51.06

Cheapest Malaga Airport Car Hire

So what was the cheapest option? We looked at two leading car hire price comparison websites — carrentals.co.uk and carhiresearch.co.uk, and both gave us car options for just £43.

Conclusions

Car hire might well be an optional extra on low-cost airline websites, but users still need to make sure they opt out of it to avoid being charged.

These airlines aren’t stupid, so we can only assume that they have done their calculations, and they know that they will get a certain percentage of people who will opt in at these prices. Quite how anyone will pay over £300 for a week’s basic off-season car rental in Malaga is beyond us, but Aer Lingus clearly seem to think that some people will. The lowest prices we looked at might be for the very cheapest model car with less well known agencies, but the price differences are still vast. Where is the logic in booking cheap flights and expensive car hire?

 Do you need a car for a visit to Malaga?

Meanwhile, another option is to consider whether or not you need a hire car at your destination in the first place. We are developing a new website, Carornocar.com, to provide advice on car hire and public transport options in a range of destinations around the world. Do you think a hire car is necessary to make the best out of a trip to Malaga and the surrounding Andalusia region? Or can you get around without one? See what we say, and let us know whether you agree or not – Car Or No Car’s Malaga Car Hire Verdict.

Notes:

  • Comparisons were done for Malaga Airport car hire between 22nd and 29th March 2012, searching for the cheapest car available with no extras added on.
  • Since doing initial check, prices were checked again on October 20th, with the cheapest car coming in at an even lower price – just £39!

What does Warren Buffett’s train investment say about airlines?

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So, Warren Buffett has invested some $26 billion buying American freight operator BNSF, with news commentators hailing this as an ‘all-in’ bet on the future of the US economy. But there’s more to it than that – it is, of course, a huge leap of faith into the future of railways, even if lumping coal isn’t exactly as glamarous as swish new high speed train sets. But Buffett has never been about style over substance, and trains in Europe are usually associated with massive subsidies.

In typical long-term Buffett style, he has talked about growth potential of rail in the USA over the next 3 decades, and even if this investment is in freight railways, there is no doubt that passenger rail networks will also see substantial development over this period.

Compare this to Buffett’s attitudes towards airlines, after he lost 75% of his $385 million investment in US Airways back in 1995. He pointed out that the he didn’t think the US airline business had ever made money – and this was in an industry without the kind of state carrier subsidies which were common elsewhere in the world. Buffett is quoted as saying, in respect of the Wright brothers’ first flight:

“If there had been a capitalist down there, the guy would have shot down Wilbur. One small step for mankind, and one huge step for capitalism.”

Has anything changed in the airline industry since 1995? Well, there’s been plenty of deregulation across the pond, and plenty of former big names are no longer with us. In Europe, we have Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary echoing many of Buffett’s sentiments, describing the current situation facing European airlines as a ‘bloodbath’, and the ‘perfect storm’. Of course, Ryanair are one of the few airlines to buck the trend, whereas this morning’s announcement from Lufthansa that they can’t find a suitable bidder for bmi, and that consequently bmibaby are shedding jobs hardly comes as a surprise.

Despite all this, Warren hasn’t been put off from investing in flying alltogether, having ditched his own private jet, aka ‘The Indefensible’ back in 1998, in favour of buying private jet hire company NetJets.

Airport Neighbours put Heathrow in the Dragon’s Den

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Well, naturally you’d expect people living near Heathrow to be the first ones to declare ‘we’re out’ – except of course that Heathrow employs vast numbers of people in the immediate vicinity.

To give a true assessment of neighbours attitudes, we’d have to look at Heathrow in comparison with other London airports. Here, Heathrow doesn’t fare so well, as aircraft usually approach over Central London, giving a much wider noise footprint  than any other London airport, when measured in terms of people disturbed per passenger carried. Of course, the quietest option would be an airport out in the Thames Estuary (aka Boris island), but before that idea gets Londoners running for their cheque books, one has to consider the costs involved, estimated last week at £40bn, or £4,000 per head, assuming a division between 10,000,000 people living in and near London.

As the main argument in favour of a Thames Estuary Airport (TEA) is one of nuisance minimisation, rather than the facilitation of growth per se, should the costs of such  a proposal be loaded onto the 400,000 or so people who are most affected by Heathrow’s current noise? If so, the cost moves up to £100,000 per head, so I think this idea gets thrown overboard very quickly when using this argument!

Verdict: Turkeys will never vote for Christmas, and airport neighbours will never vote for expansion. The first group to say “We’re out”.

Heathrow’s third runway in the Dragon’s Den

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Last week, I attended a discussion organised by CIMTIG regarding the future of Heathrow Airport, and the aviation industry in general. Sadly, because of limited time, and the attempt to discuss the whole industry, rather than just Heathrow’s third runway, they didn’t explore as many of the issues as I would like them to have done – but it was still a very informative evening.

This week is the Conservative party conference, and we expect some further discussion from the government-in-waiting about why they believe there are better ways of handling demand than building another runway.

I’d like to put Heathrow’s third runway into a ‘virtual Dragon’s Den’ and see how it gets along. Prior to last week, I’d say I was probably against the plans, but the presentation from the BAA director responsible for the third runway gave a very strong case, so I’m firmily back on the fence. Let’s see if the proposal can survive in the den. So here we have it – billions sitting on the table, rather than the usual £250,000, and I think we need a majority of the ‘Dragons’ to ‘invest’, rather than just the usual one or two.

Introducing the dragons.

In other parlance, they might be known as ‘stakeholders’ or ‘investment solutions partners’, but as I hate both of those terms, I’ll definetely stick with Dragons!

  1. Airport neighbours
  2. Passengers
  3. The Economy
  4. The Environment
  5. Airlines

The article will follow later in the week. What do you think? Would you ‘invest’?

Don’t fancy flying all the way to Australia? Why not go by bus?

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When I first read about Oz-bus.com, I thought that April fools day had come early. A long distance bus service running all the way from London to Sydney – someone had to be taking the xxxx!

But it turns out that the service is real – and that they will take you by bus as far as the prevailing conditions will allow. This should essentially mean an overland journey to Iran, a possible flight across the border into Pakistan and then again to get through Burma, and a final flight between Bali in Indonesia and Darwin in Australia – but the rest of the journey is exactly as it says on the tin, by comfortable long distance coach, apparently limited to 35 passengers per trip, so I would presume a little bit more roomy than your average scoot through London on a crowded #73 Boris-baiting bendy bus!

With a one-way journey starting at £4399, you are going to spend a lot more than a business class flight, but we think this journey is going to be more about what you see on the way than what you do when you get there, so for a three month trip, this works out at a very reasonable £50 per day, including breakfast and basic accommodation.

I’ll have to admit to being a bit ‘bussist’ myself. If I’m going to do long distance surface transport, I’d rather go by rail or sea – but given a choice between a professional bus driver and the company of a 35 strong group, or going by car, I’d still take the bus any day. Oz-bus also offer an eastbound journey to New York – via China and Alaska, and journeys through Africa, so it really does look like they are carrying on where Eurolines and Greyhound leave off. It will be interesting to see if this kind of travel ‘takes off’ (very lame pun I know) as people look for low-carbon alternatives to flying, and it will certainly be an indicator of the ability for different countries to stimulate cross-border co-operation. Iran, Pakistan and Burma might be problem areas for now, but how long before the Facebook generation catches up and reaches parts Heineken can’t reach! Twitter has certainly lead the way in Iran at least, so let’s see!

The BNP v Eco-fundamentalists – both are equally fascist

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I have no problem with the vast-majority of environmental campaigners, but there are a dangerous few out there who seem to think it is perfectly reasonable to impose a total ban on all domestic flights within the UK. More worrying than this opinion being widespread is the way it is allowed out on news reports without any kind of counter-argument. Yet whenever there is a suggestion of the BNP getting more air time, there is uproar.

So what is so wrong with suggesting a ban on domestic flights, in the name of the environment?  As the United Kingdom is made up of many islands, a sizeable portion of travel within her borders is always going to be made by air. Even over-land, there are many journeys which are totally unrealistic to make by rail, especially for business travellers wanting to head to important meetings and make it back in a day. People who think that it is an easy switch from air to rail tend not to be the ones that take the trains all that often.

Where rail services have improved, such as between London and Manchester, the proportion of people travelling by train has increased, but there will always be some people who will want to choose to fly, or who want to take a plane because the next step of their journey is an onward flight to another destination. As the network currently stands, travelling by train from Manchester to Heathrow is a great deal less convenient than flying.

Of course, some communication can be done by electronic means, but if travel broadens the mind, then those people who seek to prevent people from travelling must have very narrow minds. Except that they masquerade as intelligent, educated people acting in our best interests. At least we know what we are getting with the BNP – mindless thugs who want to see certain sectors of the population sent away. But we should never forget that freedom to move within our borders is just as important as the freedom to cross borders. I have spent time in Saudi Arabia, where we had to get a ’50k pass’ to travel internally, and it was a bureaucratic nightmare.

The environmental damage caused by flying is already healthily compensated for by existing APD (Air Passenger Duty), which is levied twice on internal flights – both on the outbound, and on the inbound journey. Even moderate increases in APD, when not counter-balanced by our European neighbours, result in a huge discouragement to travel within the UK, as flights abroad are proportionally taxed at a lower rate.

So by all means, let’s have a reasoned debate about choices in travel mode, and about their environmental impacts. But let’s not be fooled by people who think an outright ban on domestic flights, or even steep increases in their taxes, is remotely in the UK’s best interest.

Who would you like to see Flightmapping interview?

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Over the next few weeks, we plan to start interviewing some of the key movers and shakers who inspire us to travel. And we’re not just talking about tired old airline hacks like Ryanair’s motormouth Michael O’Leary, who we’ve already done to death, we want to talk to the musicians, architects and politicians who put destination cities on the map. And we might have a few words with the odd sportsperson or two, if they’ll talk to us.

I know who is top of my list – ok, he is a rich bigwig if that’s not too much of a giveaway, but we’d like to hear from our users who they’d like us to speak to. Anyone who has an influence on transport and the tourism industry is fair game, and they don’t just have to be UK based, our expense accounts like to give MP’s a good run for their money!