Hi All,
This thread seems to have started after the recent brochures, please let me start by saying that the New tours and Best of brochures are not our complete collection and therefore not all regional flights are included. If you find a tour you like the look of, I'd recommend that you visit the website where all of our current regional flight options are listed under the departures tab of the tour.
I would like to stress that the team are always looking for regional departures to tie in with the main tours departing from London. We have, in the past, even changed a London departure date to allow for more regional departures to join the tour. That said, we have found that even when regional flights are available, many travellers still choose to fly from London.
Mike, you mentioned a couple of holidays in particular, so I spoke to our aviation team who addressed your comments in relation to these:
Iceland, there are several departures a week from Birmingham International, however at the moment none of these tie in with the main London departure, we have been advised that there may be up to 5 departures a week in the future and the team are keeping a close eye on this.
Dubai - there are flights available from Birmingham on this tour, these are purchased on an ad-hoc basic rather than on a group allocation. We say that they are available on "selected dates" simply because they are subject to availability and if they sell out on a particular date, it means we are no longer able to offer it, whereas we would still be able to offer flights from London.
For Australia - I have been advised that we only offer regional departures (at the moment) where the carrier is Qantas, this is due to the internal flights that are made through the holiday also being with Qantas and we are therefore able to pass on a lower packaged price to our travellers. A change in the international carrier, would have an impact on the overall cost of the holiday which would in turn be passed on to our travellers.
I promise, the team will keep on looking for regional opportunities that are available and all comments that have been posted on this (and other threads) are being reviewed.
Kindest regards,
Julia