I had almost given up on a holiday abroad this summer because they are now so blindingly expensive. Flights alone cost more than a quarter more than last year.
But then I saw an ad from the discount website Wowcher that put a holiday for me and my wife back in my miserly grasp.
The deal offers flights and two nights accommodation for two anywhere abroad for just £99 per person.
The only catch? The trip is labeled ‘The Ultimate Mystery Holiday’ – in other words, we wouldn’t know until we paid for it where we’d be going.
The ad showed tantalizing images of New York, Las Vegas and Mexico, along with sun-drenched beach scenes that looked like they were Barbados or the Maldives. So I decided to gamble.
Promise: Wowcher’s mystery deal offers flights and two nights accommodation for two anywhere abroad for just £99 per person
The chance to fly away with my wife for a romantic weekend for less than £200 seemed too good an offer to pass up.
The deal promised us four-star accommodation – and 1,386 such holidays had already been booked in June and July.
Not wanting to miss it, I fumbled for my wallet to pay for our mysterious journey.
However, I soon found out that the £99 price was only from autumn – as we want to go before summer is over, the price was actually £129.
And then there was a £9.99 administration fee, bringing the total to £267.99.
Travel to a place that doesn’t exist
Still, I was hopeful when I received an email within hours of payment asking for some date options for when we would be available to go. I excitedly broke the news to my wife.
Then we waited patiently, passports ready, as the first weekend we requested came and went. Finally, a week later, I finally got that expected call.
Ashish was courteous and friendly and called from a call center in India. There was a rehearsed sense of theater to the proceedings – like he was opening a golden envelope.
‘Congratulations . . . you have two tickets to Sofia in Germany,’ he announced. I’ve been to Sofia in the past and I’m pretty sure it’s in Bulgaria. Is he sure?
‘Oh yeah. Sorry. It’s Bulgaria,” Ashish admitted. While I have nothing against this beautiful country, it wasn’t what I had in mind for our summer vacation and I asked if I could take another chance at the lucky dip. This time he came back with Gdansk in Poland.
Again, baffled. I told him I was willing to sulk on the line until he found a weekend getaway more to my liking.
Special deal doubles in price
My intransigence paid off and after ten minutes Ashish came back – with an offer from Milan in Italy at the end of July.
We went over the itinerary and when Ashish said we would fly from my local airport, Stansted, just 12 miles away, I was thrilled.
There was a slight hiccup as the break was three nights, not the two as requested – but as I hoped I could manage the extra time off I eagerly accepted the offer anyway.
‘Because you are booking for an extra day there is an additional charge of £129 per person,’ Ashish calmly added. I argued that I should not have to pay the supplement as it was the tour operator’s decision – not mine – to extend the trip.
But my speech made no impression. Suddenly the price of the holiday had doubled and an initial expectation of £198 had risen to a total of £525.99. Not quite the money saving trip I had in mind.
Ashish explained that ‘because June and July are so popular, there’s a lot less choice’.
As a compromise, I was willing to forget about summer vacation and go whenever he could.
Bargain bucket: Wowcher’s ‘Ultimate Mystery Holiday’ deal offers two nights for just £99 per person – but you don’t know where you’ll end up
Summer residence – in winter
Ashish then left for another 20 minutes to discover what else might be in the tour operator’s secret safe. I was thankful to have found someone so helpful.
He could have told me all too easily that there were no more choices on the table or done what so many companies do these days when they don’t want to help – and just hung up.
It also helped that I remained courteous and understood all too well that call center agents are often abused unnecessarily for simply trying to do their jobs.
Finally, Ashish came back on the line: “Okay. Venice in November. That’s the best I can do.’
Negotiations were over and I felt this was a reasonable outcome considering it cost the original £267.99 I paid for. Yet it still wasn’t for if I really wanted to travel and would have to go from Gatwick Airport – considerably less convenient than Stansted.
The itinerary was e-mailed a little later from a company called ‘Weekend Breaks’. Apparently we would be traveling via Wizz Air (it has the dubious honor of being ‘the worst short-haul airline’, according to consumer group Which?).
If I had bought two return tickets separately for these trips it would have cost me just £88. Of course, only hand luggage was included with the tickets. If we had brought suitcases they would have cost more than the flights.
But the hotel was the biggest disappointment, as it was a simple three-star hotel, some five miles outside Venice itself. I looked it up and could have got it for £170 for two nights if I booked direct. So if I had booked the break myself I would have paid £10 less than on the mystery offer.
Great expectations not fully met
This mystery holiday had turned into a bit of a damp squib and I called the next day to explain my disappointment.
In preparation I was armed with the knowledge that when booking a holiday under package travel regulations there is protection if the holiday does not turn out to be as expected.
And it would be fair to assume that when booking an advertised holiday in Venice, this is where I would expect to stay.
I politely present this matter. To my surprise it worked and I was upgraded to a 4-star hotel (as initially promised in the promotion) in Venice.
This property costs £300 to book direct – so by taking advantage of the Mystery Holiday deal I was now £120 higher.
The deal promised four-star accommodation – and claimed 1,386 such holidays had already been booked in June and July
Chance of winning the perfect vacation
Weekender Breaks is the trading name of Viva Holidays, an agent for Hays Travel.
Dive into the terms and conditions in the fine print – tucked away in a link under ‘the fine print’ – and you’ll find that holidays are sold in batches of 1,000 to a wide variety of destinations.
Only one in every 1,000 copies purchased comes from Barbados. And you get the same chances to hit the jackpot with locations like New York and Dubai.
There are over 50 other ‘winning’ destinations, many of which offer dozens of holidays – almost all of them in Europe.
A tip for anyone tempted to buy a Mystery Holiday: print out the full list of available destinations and keep it handy when you’re told where you’re being sent so you’re better prepared to to fight for where you really want to go.
A spokesperson for Hays Travel says: ‘We advise people to always read the fine print of offers offering holidays well below market value. It helps to keep expectations realistic.’
But is the mystery holiday worth a point? Well, after quite a bit of haggling and several phone calls, I finally saved some money.
But – as with so many things in life – I found that you get what you pay for.
toby.walne@dailymail.co.uk
Have you ever been on an ‘Ultimate Mystery’ vacation? Please email your experience to tom.cotterill@mailonline.co.uk
Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on it, we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money and use it for free. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to compromise our editorial independence.