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"Saving money is cool". This motto was not stop short of the tourism industry. Travel offers from discount markets recently sprang up like mushrooms. Are they able to outstrip the travel agencies? How can this development be explained? Are we really living in a
"Mc-Society"?
Avarice is awesome! Nobody can really hear it anymore, but this selling motto is still up-to-date. The Scottish name affix "Mc" is often not used in its original meaning "son of" anymore. All of us connect to "Mc" a calculated marketing strategy from McDonald's to McFit, McDental and McMoney. This "creative" naming has also infected the travel industry. McFlight and McTravelService are just two of many examples. All formats have the aspiration of cheap products with a semblance of youthfulness in common.
Discount is apparently in vogue! Consequently journeys are offered in places, where consumers are used to make a good bargain - that is in the supermarket. The Tengelmann-subsidiary Plus broke the first ground and is offering a monthly travel folder since 2004. Lidl, Aldi and Penny followed in December 2006. At the beginning of this year ReWe, Edeka and Norma have caught up and offered journeys, too. The consumers often don't know who is behind the seemingly cheap offers. Aldi distributes journeys of the tour operator "Berge & Meer" - a subsidiary of TUI. Lidl offers journeys from "Paneuropa. Supermarket journeys are nothing else but an unconventional sales channel for tour operators.
Effectively new product are not discoverable for consumers. But the offers could be attractive for some costumers. For one thing the discounters advertise with their sensational prices, which are however on closer inspection comparable to or even more expensive than the prices of travel agencies. For the other thing the supermarkets score with their limited and assessable travel offers. Nowadays one knows that a too large choice is as debilitating as a too small choice.
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