Hotel & Tourism Marketing Blog

Caribbean Consulting

Merchandising w Marketing w Distribution w Profitability

Online Auctions
A New Way to Buy Your Vacation? 

©2000 Richard B. Holm

  Yikes!  Is it really possible that I just spent almost $4,000 to buy a vacation by auction on the internet?   A vacation that I didn’t really know all that much about – other than that it was a 10-day tour of Egypt by a leading tour operator, including airfare on an ‘international carrier’ and hotel plus Nile cruise with Mövenpick (the one familiar name in the equation).

   It hadn’t started out this way at all.  I had originally planned to book a standard vacation package to India with my traditional travel agent – but by the time I could finesse space for a business class frequent flier ticket – all the tours I wanted were sold out.

  Rather than drive my agent crazy checking all the ‘last-minute’ space on exotic tours, I decided to check out the internet and see what was available.

   I started out with what sounded like the perfect web site – www.lastminute.com which promised great deals.  The only problem was that it is a UK-based site, with almost all trips departing from London-area airports and priced in pounds.  Even though the trips looked great, getting to London defeated almost any price savings.

   Next, I discovered the similar-sounding www.lastminutetravel.com which is a US-based site which promises many ‘just-released offers’.  They have a great ‘search for packages’ section which holds the promise of great trips from your local airport to almost anywhere in the world.  Unfortunately, every combination I tried resulted in ‘No locations matched your From criteria…… etc.’  After several tries I decided that this site had promise in the future, but ‘did not match my criteria’ right now.

   Then, I happened to stumble on a vacation auction site, www.bidtripper.com which had lots of great exotic destinations listed.  But when I selected locations such as India or China or Egypt – all I got back was a message that lamented “Sorry, Right now we don’t have any auctions on file that offer vacation packages within that country”.  Sorry Bidtripper, I hunted and pecked a little too much and won’t be back soon!

   Just about ready to give up on internet travel, I decided to check my standard travel resource www.travelocity.com  for a less exotic trip to Madrid or Barcelona.   A link to Discounts and a graphic for www.skyauction.com caught my eye and I decided to give the internet ‘one last click’ before giving up.

   Skyauction was a pleasant change from the other sites – when I clicked on ‘Africa’, or ‘Europe’, or ‘Asia’ I actually found a wide variety of flights and trips to choose from.  Many were in the category of ‘round-trip airfare from east coast to Europe, or South Africa, or Thailand’.  However, there were several interesting tours including Safaris in Kenya, Tours to Johannesburg and Capetown and my 10-day tour to Egypt including Nile Cruise.  All including airfare from New York or Boston (with add-ons from many US cities).

   What makes Skyauction a little different from most auctions like Bidtripper, is that they have no ‘opening bid’ or ‘reserve price’ quoted.  So it is not uncommon to find a great trip that has a ‘current winning bid’ of $300 or $571 or even one dollar for vacations that you know are worth much more.  Great incentive to bid low and hope nobody else will bid.

   Of course determining just how much a trip is worth is a little bit of a challenge.  Since you don’t know the airline, the tour operator or in many cases the hotels used – it can be almost impossible to ‘guess’ at the retail value of a trip.

   For instance, I could check with my travel agent or the many tour operator web sites, or www.vacation.com and find that a 10-day Egyptian tour with cruise could run anywhere from $1,700 to well more than $3,000 for the time of year I was considering (Departure was allowed anytime before December 8th).

   So, I started bidding for two of the possible four spaces available at $501 per person a few days prior to the closing of the auction.  Using a very efficient automatic bidding utility, I was able to ‘up-bid’ any competitors one dollar at a time, up to my self-imposed limit of $1,000 per person.  This price, along with a $295 per person tax and service fee, was certainly well below the minimum value of the vacation – no matter what the retail value truly was.

   By the day before closing, my maximum was out-bid.  But by then, I was  ‘hooked’ on both the excitement of the auction and the prospect of going to Egypt.   Thinking ‘logically’ – I decided that booking another trip at this point would be difficult. I also justified that Movenpick was a very reputable company and their cruise ship was comparable to the Sonesta ship which was used in many upscale tours.  Finally, I poked around Travelocity and found that the ‘international carrier’ had to be either Swissair, British Air, Lufthansa or Alitalia since they were the only ones with decent service form Boston.  So naturally, I could justify increasing my bid to $1,250 per person.  This plus the service fee would still be a bargain.

   All was well and good until four hours before closing.  There were three sets of bidders for a total of four tickets.  Checking out the previous ‘winners’ list of past auctions – the last time this trip was auctioned it had sold for a bit more than $1500.  I also did a quick check of the ‘About SkyAuctions’ section of the site and found that the site was owned/operated by Magical Holidays – an experienced tour operator based in New York.  So, naturally, I upped my bid to $1,550 per person.  After all, this should guarantee decent value and a winning bid.

   Fifteen minutes to closing – I’m good, I’m good, bidding is up, but I’m still in the running for two of the four vacation packages.  Then PANIC – I’m outbid!  Ten minutes to go and my visions of floating down the Nile are evaporating as fast as a spilt martini in the desert.   No way am I going to let this trip slip through my fingers now that I’m so close!   Five minutes to go and I up my bid to $1,577 and see it automatically outbid in seconds.  Three minutes and I see $1,600 matched by both competitors.  I’m a hundred dollars over the previous weeks’, winner, but what the heck – with seconds to go I up the bid to $1,650 and as time runs out on the autobidder – I wind up in second place with $1,625 per person.  Second place finish – but good enough for two of the four spots.

   The warm flush of victory quickly fades into a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach as I realize that I have just spent $1,625 plus $295 for two people or a total of $3,840 on my American Express Card over THE INTERNET.

   What have I done??? I am surely insane.  I have surely paid too much for the trip.  I have to find a way to worm myself out of this mess!

   My worse fears are confirmed when I enter my preferred travel dates in SkyAuction’s automated system and get a congratulatory email with the proposed flights.  At first, I was encouraged – the flights were on KLM, a wonderful airline.  But the connection was horrible.  We would depart Boston in the afternoon, arrive in Amsterdam early the next morning and not leave for Cairo until that evening with an arrival in Egypt after 1am the next day.  This left me with my fabulous trip taking three travel days, ten hours stuck in an airport between flights and no sleep before the first day’s tour!   I could arrange a stop-over to solve the problem, but at a cost of $150 per person.  Even more money for a bad experience! 

   Boy, was I stupid!  How could I have been such an idiot?  I could put up with the flights, but my travel companion would never survive and my reputation as an expert travel planner would forever be ruined – with good reason.  Why hadn’t I noticed such horrible connections when I researched the flights?  Why hadn’t I stopped at $1,600 and let the other guy win?  Why did I let my emotions get the better of good old common sense?  You just don’t do this sort of thing!

   I had to get out of this trip!  I could tell them it was all a mistake!  I could tell them my nephew had won the auction with my credit card number but without my authorization.   I could just deny the charges to American Express.  Something had to work!

   Finally, I just told the truth.  The SkyAuction agent I worked with – Kathy was very sympathetic when I explained that the trip sounded lovely, but the flights were just simply unacceptable.  In fact, the connections were so bad – that they didn’t even show up on the airline schedules as valid connections (either in Travelocity or KLM’s own web site).

   Kathy was sympathetic and explained that although the tours normally used KLM to African destinations (the Kenya connection was great), she admitted that this connection was horrible.  And then she typed the magic words, “if the arrangements are not acceptable to you as the customer the trip wouldn’t be appropriate, but let me check on some other flight options first”.

   Thank goodness, I could get out of the trip if I wanted to!  But then again, I really wanted to go to Egypt by now.  And the agent and tour operator were so nice and willing to accommodate me.  Now, if they would only send me a detailed itinerary and quote me the ‘retail price’ I would feel much better.

   Well, the itinerary came quickly.  The flights were changed to a wonderful schedule on Lufthansa and a stopover was arranged in Frankfurt for only $75 per person.  We arrived in Egypt the afternoon before the tours started and everything was great.

   But how much should the trip really cost.  All my inquiries went unanswered and although I was now confirmed on the trip, I wasn’t going to really feel good until I knew if I had paid retail price, overpaid, or gotten a great bargain.   Kathy was very sweet on the phone and by email – but only suggested that most customers went to regular travel agents and found ‘comparable tours’ to check prices (a strategy I’m sure your local travel agent isn’t very happy about).

   Finally, with the itinerary and ‘tour name’ in hand, I located the exact tour on the internet through another tour operator.  Although my travel dates weren’t listed exactly, the tour seemed to retail at about $2,600 - $2,800.  This would mean a savings of about $700 per person by buying the trip at auction.   Not bad!

   Suddenly, I was quite the savvy internet travel buyer (but deep down I knew that all along).  Documents, tickets, visa applications and detailed instructions all arrived quickly and I’m off to Egypt with money to spare.   Now, even if I’m not ready to travel, I’m addicted to surfing this internet auction site for more ‘unexpected’ trips.  I’m eyeballing those African Safaris next – so don’t even think about bidding against someone who’s auction name is ‘gungo’.

   Although the experience ended up being very satisfying, there is one major improvement I’d suggest to the site.  First and most importantly – listing the ‘retail price’ would ease the biggest fear of most online bidders, that of overpaying for a trip.   This might even prompt bidders to raise their bids, since under the current system you either have to do quite a bit of research to guess the retail price, or assume a minimal value among seemingly comparable tours.  I believe that most people would feel that they got a good deal if they were within a 15-25% savings which might have meant I’d be willing to bid even higher than my winning bid.

   As for the other vacation sites mentioned, they would do well by learning from sites such as SkyAuctions in actually providing tours to the areas they list.  Although SkyAuctions didn’t have the biggest selection of tours – there was something under every section listed and I never received those infuriating  “sorry, we don’t have what you’re looking for” messages.  There was always something to explore and no ‘dead ends’.  After all, even on the internet, travelers want to discover new paths, new opportunities, new challenges – not stumble down blind alleys.

   For potential bidders, I’d suggest that you do your homework and save yourself some of the self-imposed angst I inflicted upon myself.  Also, be very sensitive to the time frame of your proposed departures.   Trips very far in advance seem to go at slightly less than trips 90-120 days from departure (a good timeframe for planning).  As you get closer to departure day the trips can get significantly cheaper – the last 10-day Egypt tour went for $1,301 per person.  However, I was satisfied paying the extra for my trip since it gave me time to properly plan, obtain visas and work around my schedule. 

   Now that I’m hooked on travel auctions I’ve checked out the old standards of Ebay, Yahoo and Amazon auctions and dismissed them as amateurish.  Most of their offerings seem to be for questionable “buy a coupon for $19 and fly anywhere in the world” type schemes.  Nothing I would even spend time investigating.  From my brief look, none of these sites seem to be populated by reputable tour operators, airlines or travel agents. 

   Another auction site that seems promising is www.thedailyauction.com which offers flights on Lufthansa, AeroMexico and hotels with Hilton International.   The only drawback here is that the departure and return dates are pre-designated (usually for one week) which eliminates any flexibility.  But, if you can match your travel to their dates – the prices can be fantastic!

   So, when it comes to either discount, last minute travel or online auctions, check out any internet sites to make sure they are backed by experienced travel professionals with a solid track record, be brave and have a great time!

This page was last updated on 06/29/2008