Travel Question: Who ripped us off – and what should we do?

Have a question? Ask our expert Simon Calder

Cruising for a bruising: an 11-day trip to Venice raises eyebrows at £14,000 (Getty)

Q My wife recently bought me a trip as a special present which involved a flight to Rome from Bristol with one night in a top hotel then an eight-day cruise around to Venice, where we had a two-night stay at the Hotel Danieli before a flight back to Bristol. She booked it through a leading UK travel agent and paid over £14,000.

Because we had some problems with the boat we were all given a letter giving us a discount off our next cruise of 15 per cent of the amount we paid for this cruise. We therefore needed to find out how much the cruise element was worth. An official on board showed us on his computer that the cost of the cruise was only £7,058 – less than half the total cost of the trip.

Even allowing an additional £600 for flights, £1,400 for the hotels and £400 for transfers, it means that someone has made a profit of about £5,000.

We are not happy and wish to get to the bottom of this to find out who is cheating us. How should we proceed?

Name withheld

A The short answer, I am afraid is: put it down to experience. My eyebrows were raised by the amount you paid for an 11-day trip. It works out at around £660 per person per day, which is roughly twice what I estimate for a high-quality Mediterranean cruise (the sort of trips I go on are approximately £100 per person per day). And I am afraid it may be even more extreme than you thought: the £7,058 may be including the commission the tour operator earned from the cruise line, which could amount to £700 or more. So assuming your estimates for the other elements are about right, the travel firm evidently felt that 35 or 40 per cent was what it deserved.

On a trip like this, I believe that 25 per cent would be the maximum reasonable profit margin. But the actual amount that the travel company took for arranging the trip (and assuming responsibility for a number of risks, such as flights or transfers going awry) is irrelevant: your wife willingly paid the sum requested.

For big, expensive trips, I always ask three competing companies to quote (and I let them know that I am comparing prices to help focus their minds). I also have a quick look at the costs of a DIY trip, as a benchmark.

While I am happy to pay a reasonable amount for a travel firm’s expertise and to reduce my risk exposure, this method keeps costs down. You and your wife might want to adopt the same principle in future.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder