Rooms from as little as £1 per night are available through Thomas Cook's new venture into the independent travel market, which launched this week. The package holiday giant went live with roomsandhotels.com on Tuesday, offering 10,000 hotels across 700 resorts - and promised that very cheap deals like £14pp per night at the five-star Olympic Palace in Rhodes are not just introductory offers.
"Those are contracted prices, not special promotions. It's not like budget airlines where the first 10 customers get those prices and everyone else pays more," said a spokesman.
At time of going to press, several hotels and self-catering apartments were available for under £20pp per night, even during the peak summer holiday season.
The website is accessible by both travel agents and consumers, who are "never more than eight clicks away from buying their accommodation," said the spokesman.
The launch comes as a result of the recent sharp growth in independent travel, with 18 million Britons a year now holidaying overseas independently.
Thomas Cook's venture follows the launch of impulseholidays.com from Thomson Holidays' parent group TUI. Specialising in city breaks (with 26 destinations throughout Europe, the US and Middle East), it also sells "accommodation only" and "flight only" deals. Also targeting independent travellers, Impulse sells flights with both low-cost and traditional scheduled airlines. Prices start from £89 per person for two nights in Paris in two-star accommodation with Eurostar this month.
Meanwhile MyTravel is also "dabbling" in the independent sector, according to a spokesman. Mytravel.com and mytravellite.comhave links to totalstay.com and hotelstogo.co.uk, allowing customers to package their holiday up independently.
And First Choice said it is keeping a close eye on the market. "We will be launching a business-to-consumer website at some point in the future," it confirmed this week.
More to the pound
It's not just the US where travellers will notice their pounds buying more this summer, according to new figures from Thomas Cook. The strong pound means many of the UK's favourite holiday destinations will actually be cheaper than in recent years. For instance, £100 will currently buy you eight more euros than this time last year: enough for a bottle of wine in Greece, two cocktails on the Algarve or a three-course meal and two beers in Turkey.
"Of course holiday money rates do change, and so some people are taking advantage of the current savings by buying their currency now," added a Thomas Cook spokesman.
