Whenever I hear the words “the King’s Speech”, my mind conjures up welcome images of Colin Firth and his lisp-laden performance as King George VI. It was a triumphant film and one that cemented Firth’s status as a national treasure.
However, following the actual, current King’s Speech on Tuesday, all of that has changed. Now the phrase stirs up emotional images of our King – Charles III – bravely speaking to his people and vowing (sort of) to ban one of the most annoying things about airline travel.
No, the King hasn’t vowed to ban babies or badly behaved children on planes, or drunks or stag-dos, or even people who, when you have the aisle seat and they’re in the middle, insist on asking if you wouldn’t mind swapping as they’ve got IBS, or want to sit closer to their family.
Readers, the King instead spoke like a man who truly knows what it’s like to be stung by an airline’s deceitful hidden costs. I imagine he and Camilla must have been away recently, perhaps on a little trip to Tenerife, Marbella or a budget Benidorm getaway. I imagine our monarch delighted in getting a decent price on the flight only to discover, later in the booking process, that… that initial price was merely a dream. The travel industry’s equivalent to a Venus flytrap, which has caught us all off guard.
This must have made the King angrier than that time his pen didn’t work, and he hasn’t let it slide. Outraged by these add-ons, Charles has announced a Consumer’s Bill that could ban drip pricing (and yes, before you write in, I know that the King doesn’t actually come up with these proposals, he just reads them out).
Anyone who has travelled will know the gutting annoyance that drip pricing causes. (The Government’s Department for Business and Trade said 72 per cent across the transport and communication sectors had used drip pricing.) I’m writing this article from Slovakia. When booking my flight here, I revelled at the astonishing cost of it. £11! I didn’t care that it was departing from Luton at some ungodly hour. It didn’t matter. For just over a tenner, who could possibly complain? I didn’t think flights this cheap were possible post-Covid. Sadly, I was right. By the time I’d added some bags and selected a suitable seat, that £11 dream had died, and the price had been basically multiplied by 10.
The budget airlines defend their pricing policy by saying prices are accurate. Which is true. They can be accurate if you don’t mind arriving at the airport like Joey Tribbiani in that famous Friends episode. However, most of us can’t go “commando” mode by packing next to nothing for our holidays.
Another crafty tactic to squeeze a few more quid out of us is this: if you’re in a group and you’re booking a trip away, you and your friends will be separated as if you’re back in primary school and you’ve been making a nuisance of yourselves by talking too much in class. Unless you pay more. And I guess if you’re travelling with friends, it’s a no-brainer to shell out a few more quid to sit together. (I can’t say the same is true if you’re flying with your spouse or your family; in fact, some people might just pay more for the chance of some respite from sitting apart.)
It’s not just airlines that take off with our money using this so-called drip pricing, though. In the entertainment industry, they might use booking fees. Gyms also use this tactic with signing-up fees, and some hotels do a similar thing. When you book, you think you’re set for a life of luxury only to find out that if you want to use the sauna, pool or even get a towel you had better be ready to get your wallet out. Again.
I’ve also been stung by drip pricing on a dubious retail website. I saw an initial price of under a tenner for what appeared to be a very smart sophisticated blazer but once I’d whacked in my address and selected postage that would have it arrive within the decade, I paid at least double that. The blazer arrived…. and just like many things online was not as it appeared in photos. My visions of looking like Pierce Brosnan in his prime (think James Bond days) were dashed and the blazer made me look more like an over-the-hill Psy (think geriatric Gangnam style).
This drip pricing ban could be a good thing, but some reports suggest it could see the initial price of a flight rise by, on average, over £80. So it’s sort a catch-22. We’ll be robbed of that feeling of getting a bargain when we see the dreamy initial price, but we’ll no longer feel like… well, “right silly drips” when we’re confronted with reality.
Maurice Saatchi: I used to adore capitalism – then I had lunch with Margaret Thatcher