You can't charge that price!

We've responded to calls for travel commissions in the Whitsundays to be slashed (see Related Articles) by setting up a new Whitsundays based Online Only Booking service, 'Hi from the Whitsundays' - hosted on hi.net.au & soon, mum.com.au .

We will be offering tours at prices that include what we feel is a fair commission; we use a booking service 'back end' that almost any travel operator can use on their website and they are charged the same 'cost' prices for tours as we are. It is their decision to either charge the RRP or something less, or something more. We have decided to charge less.

However, one tour company has told us that we can not reduce our commissions on their tours and that we must charge the full, recommended retail price, otherwise they will not make their tours available to us, to sell to you.

What makes our prices low is that we choose to charge our future customers a smaller commission. Because we are offering lower prices doesn't mean the operator is getting less - they get the same whether I sell one of their '$200 cost' tours for $220 or $440 or $880. No matter what I sell his $200 cost' tour for, the operator still gets just the $200.

The commissions on tours are generous, and as we do not have a shopfront and operate entirely online, we do not need to pay for expensive shop rents, rates, office expenses etc. - we feel these savings should be passed on to the visitor / customer. Unfortunately  one operator believes we should not drop our profit margin and must provide their tours at the RRP.

We have removed that operators tours and services.

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