A recent e-petition that calls for holiday companies to stop charging extra during school holidays has received over 170,000 signatures and, as a result, the Back Bench Committee has agreed to hold a debate on this issue in Westminster hall on 24^th February 2014.  The debate may prompt further local and national press interest in the subject.  The Tourism Alliance briefing note may serve as  a useful reply or prove  help in formulating your responses:  2014 School Holiday Pricing Debate Brief

The Hansard report on the Westminster Hall Back Bench Business debate on Holiday Pricing can be accessed at:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm140224/halltext/140224h0001.htm#1402247000105 

A long debate, but one in  in which the majority appear to have accepted that the argument that the problem isn’t really about tourism industry profiteering but about the difficulties of getting a meaningful, yet workable spread in school holidays across both the year and across the UK educational system, something that has been looked at before.  This long standing problem has recently been exacerbated in England by the application of new DFE rules regarding unauthorised absence.

Predictably some of the press comment is still focused on the effect: higher prices, rather than the cause: higher demand and takes the popular, simplistic line that this must equal profiteering, without saying by whom where or when.