Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calde. It's Friday the 24th of April.

You may well, as I have been doing, been reading all week about fuel surcharges. Well, interestingly, the leading Western Channel ferry company, Brittany Ferries, is saying no surcharges.

I've been hearing more from Christoph Mattoe.

He is the chief executive of British and E Ferries.

And I put it to him, you're running a business.

Price of oil has gone through the roof. Why would

you not want to surcharge passengers? Well, because we have done what we normally do, which is

edging, so we've bought forward our fuel, and therefore we don't have any uncertainty going

forward, so therefore we don't need to surcharge because we know what we're going to pay our fuel

for the next month.

But do you know what you're paying, for instance, in October?

Yeah, up to October, we know.

And it's broadly what the price were before the crisis started, i.e. on the basis of

$70 a barrel, because that's what we hedged. But when you edge, you take a gamble.

If it was going down for whatever reason, if the barrel had gone down to $40, we would pay $70,

but of course it's a very prudent way because it secures your season. And I guess we're very pleased of having done so because,

of course, with what's happened. And at the same time, we happen to notice that it's not come,

not everybody's done that. And that's why we want to also flag out that if people are worried to book

or they worry about prices going up or anything like that. They don't have to

worry with us because we can commit to the fact that our prices will not go up because of the

fuel crisis. That's a strong position to be in because lots of companies, whether they are

ferry companies, whether they are airlines, whether they are bus companies even, are saying,

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