Blaise Tapp: Memories of holidays in the sun come at too high a price for many

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Like hundreds of thousands of other Brits, I'm currently counting down the days until we escape the misery of late winter for a half term break in the sun.

We're currently juggling the pressures of work and child wrangling while making sure we have done everything we need to do before jetting off: order currency, work out how we are getting to the airport while remembering to dig out the trousers with the elasticated waist. I'm bound to forget something, although it's very unlikely I'll forget how much the holiday has cost us because taking the family away during school holidays is, generally speaking, extortionate. Always has been.

But, like millions of others, we factor in the high cost when we plan our budget to work out where we can afford to go each year. After all, you can't put a price on memories, can you? Which is exactly what bosses of travel companies and airlines have been doing ever since our grandparents's generation first rocked up in Benidorm sixty odd years ago.

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But it seems that a growing number of parents are refusing to pay inflated school holiday prices and are opting to take their children out of lessons in order to benefit from the far cheaper prices that are available during term time.

Family holidays are all about making memories. Photo: AdobeFamily holidays are all about making memories. Photo: Adobe
Family holidays are all about making memories. Photo: Adobe

Latest figures have shown that the number of parents fined by their local authorities for taking their children out of school without permission has increased by more than a fifth in just one year. Many parents talk about factoring in the £80 fine per child as tax they are happy to factor in if it means getting the same holiday for hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds, cheaper than it would’ve been during the holiday season. This worrying increase has prompted one teaching union boss to argue that fines are a ‘blunt instrument’ and that the Government should work with the travel industry to address the ‘cause’ of this growing problem. My initial reaction was ‘good luck with that’ as, on the face of it, there seems very little that politicians could do to convince an entire industry to change an age-old business model. The principle of supply and demand is central to capitalism, something that most of us have happily played along with for decades.

Yet, massively ramped up holiday prices are something that boils the blood of hardworking parents everywhere and goes against any sense of fairness, something politicians bang on about all the time when it suits them.

However, we can live in hope that this very unfair practice will, one day, be consigned to history.

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