Hello, I'm Simon Corder, welcoming you to the latest independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you are wandering off to the four corners of the world or just dreaming of a great escape.

Today, I want to give you a kind of state of the nation address about how the summer is looking,

because my goodness, some of the research I have been doing today shows how extreme the variations are.

You might recall that just a week or two ago,

we were hearing from the boss of Tuwi,

Europe's biggest holiday company,

huge firm that has big interests,

both in the UK, in Germany and other European countries.

And he told me, well, basically,

we're not going to have any last minute

deals. I should stress that I did double check with him and he said that's in peak summer,

July and August. We're also not going to see any great deals in half term, but every bit of evidence that I am seeing suggests that if you do not have to travel during the peak summer holidays, then you are going to get a pretty good deal.

And if you do, my goodness, you will be paying through the nose the evidence i have for this is

very simply a couple of flights from london standstill to pisa i can fly off i can book this right now

by the way i can fly from london to pisa flight of about two hours on the world's safest airline

as you know ryanair on monday evening um and then i can come back what four days later after a

lovely city break in the gateway to tuscany middle of the morning departure and that will bring me safely and happily back to

Stansted. That's going to cost me £24. If I repeat it the following week, which is during the

main half term, at least for schools in England and Wales, well, the price is a bit different.

It's £500 more expensive.

Yes, it is. Or if you prefer 25 times, the price. That is a staggering increase, of course, but it just shows how there is less capacity in the market at the moment.

I think we're looking at maybe 15% down on the last pre-pandemic year 2019.

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