It is not just cars that are cheaper in other countries. Suddenly it appears that package holiday-makers, long accustomed to the conventional wisdom that Britain is Europe's bargain basement for travel, could pay less by booking abroad.
But can you really save enough to justify the hassle? Are the big differences in price widespread - or are they isolated examples? How confident are you of understanding the small print of a brochure written in a foreign language? And how can you be sure you are comparing identical holidays?
Clearing up all these doubts will involve time-consuming research. On the face of it, the contention that holiday costs have become the latest manifestation of rip-off Britain looks unlikely to stand the test of close inspection.
Competition between tour operators has always been fiercest here. More charter airlines are based in the UK than in any other European country, as are most of the continent's new breed of low-cost carriers, such as easyJet, Go and Buzz.
But suppose you are planning a week browsing the wonders of Luxor, on the Nile, this October. Book to stay at the Sheraton, with Thomson, and the brochure price is £509. Book through Budget Travel in Dublin, which is also part of the Thomson group, and the price is only I£339 (£269). What about getting to Dublin? You might be able to get a cheaper deal closer to departure, but assuming you will want to be sure of getting there, Ryanair will sell you a return ticket for the appropriate dates for £59.30, including taxes. Thus, the total saving would be just over £180.
It could also be possible to save money booking through a German tour operator. Comparisons of similar packages from JMC in the UK and Germany's largest tour operator, TUI, show the latter's prices are often lower.
Both firms are under the same German ownership. The TUI prices are those shown on its website, but the company confirms that most of these correspond to those published in its brochures.
In Jamaica, for example, JMC charges £895 for one week in early August at the all-inclusive Club Ambiance on Runaway Bay. The German price is DM2,723, or £867. At Club Caribbean, on the same bay, JMC wants £1,055 for an all-inclusive week; TUI charges DM2,773, or £883. For the Swept Away resort in Negril, the respective all-inclusive prices are £1,329 and from DM3,813 (£1,214), depending on room type.
But with a difference of little more than £100 a head, you would be stretched to save much money booking through the German company. All the TUI examples involve flying from Frankfurt. Most of the saving would be eaten up by the cost of getting there. At the time of writing, the cheapest round-trip on offer from low-fare specialist Trailfinders was £41.40 with Ryanair from Stansted. Next best appeared to be a £60 fare with Buzz and a £139 return with Lufthansa from Heathrow.
Assuming most people would want to stay overnight in Frankfurt, to be sure of catching the next day's flight to the Caribbean, you would have to add the price of a hotel room. That would absorb a big chunk of the saving or render the whole exercise pointless, depending on which airline you flew with.
This is not the only pitfall. You must be sure of comparing like with like. The number of hotels shared by British and overseas operators is relatively limited. Assuming you can find the property of your choice in a German or Irish brochure, say, you also need to ascertain that flights depart and arrive at equally convenient times, that you will get the same kind of room with the same view, and that the price covers identical arrangements for both meals and drinks.
For example: JMC's brochure shows an adult price of £1,425 for a week at the Coco Palm Resort on Baa Atoll in the Maldives. TUI's website quotes prices from DM2,984, again from Frankfurt, which works out at around at £950 at the current exchange rate and looks like an enormous gap. But wait. The UK price is for an all-inclusive deal. The TUI price is for bed and breakfast, though the German company does offer half-board at about £1,000.
A nd none of these comparisons takes into account special offers. The main reason German prices look lower is that the law in Germany deters operators from the kind of deep discounting that takes place in the UK. TUI says it is not absolutely clear whether price cutting is illegal but that while operators remain in doubt, they tend to bypass the problem by re-packaging their holidays. What looks like a discount, in other words, may be a package with different ingredients.
In Britain, discounting is a way of life. Book a summer holiday in January, for example, when operators and high-street travel agents traditionally jockey furiously for business, and you could easily get 20% off the brochure price.
Another reason for the price gap is that German firms do not normally offer "free" child places. British tour operators do. But the child has to be paid for somewhere, and that somewhere is likely to be in the adult price.
A third reason is the current strength of sterling against other European currencies. This may go some way towards explaining the otherwise puzzling difference between UK and Irish prices. Sterling has risen by more than 10% against the Irish punt in the last year alone.
To sum up, then, it can certainly be cheaper to book abroad but it takes determination. If the flight from Dublin or Frankfurt departs early, you may have to add the cost of overnight accommodation into the arithmetic.
And nobody contemplating doing so should forget that if the holiday goes sour, if you do not get what you paid for or you are taken ill, the battle for compensation will take place in another country, too - and perhaps in another language.
Orlando - save £899 buying in Dublin
How Thomson's Florida prices compare with those of Budget Travel in Dublin: A family of two adults and two children, spending two weeks in early August at the Howard Johnson Maingate East hotel, two miles from Disneyworld in Kissimmee, Orlando, would pay a total of £2,698. Booking through Budget, they would pay I£2,267 (£1,799).
At the Howard Johnson Plaza Resort, Universal Gateway, comparative packages would cost £2,754 and I£2,447 (£1,942) - a difference of over £812. A similar holiday at Best Western's Plaza International, also in Orlando, would cost £2,326 and I£2,229 (£1,769) respectively .
Luxor - save £240 buying in Dublin
Egyptian comparisons: for one week's bed and breakfast at the Hotel St Joseph in Luxor, in October, based on two people sharing a room, Thomson charges £455 while Budget Travel's asking price is I£309 (£245).
At the Mercure Coralia, the prices are £425 and I£329 (£261); the Sheraton is priced at £509 and I£339 (£269).
• Contact addresses Budget Travel: 00 353 1 6311111 www.budgettravel.ie
TUI: simplest contact is via: www.tui.de
