Hi Will/Sue
At the risk of upsetting the product team I feel I want to come out in support of Sue, somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to remember Ben promising "new and exciting holidays" in the 2013 brochure, well I think they forgot to put them in mine! (apologies to Ben if I dreamt it).
I guess if people are fairly new to JY there's a whole choice of holidays for them to choose from, but what about the people out there like myself who have been with JY for a while (11 long haul and 2 short haul), what's "new and exciting" for them. And I've lost count of the holidays that have disappeared since I started holidaying with JY.
I know there's 10 new holidays but looking down the list only 2 actually stood out for me, the one to Florida which I have no interest in as I have no desire to go to the USA and the one to Calabria which as a lover of Italy looks like a really good choice, but I hadn't planned on a short haul holiday just yet.
The Walking in the Ahr Valley is now by rail so I guess its just the train that makes it "new" not the holiday itself.
The South Africa Explorer has been changed a bit and had 2 days knocked off so I guess that could be classed as "new" but a big chunk is still the same as 2012.
Inspirational China. For anyone who has been to China in the past Shanghai and the Chendu Panda Breeding Centre may not be new as they used to be in a holiday to China that disappeared, but I think it would be a good holiday for anyone travelling to China for the first time.
Will says "you can see we have responded to feed back", feed back from who? It must be remembered that not everyone who goes on a JY holiday uses the community website and joins in the debates and discussions on there, if fact I have met people who didn't know it even existed and I dare say that there are people like myself who only dip into it now and again to see if there is anything relevant to an approaching holiday or because they have a gap in an otherwise busy day, like its pouring with rain and spoilt my plans for the day.
Will, I would like to see some NEW holiday destinations with a culture/lifestyle completely different from our own, somewhere in Asia or South America would be nice.
Hmmmm! I do see Calabria beckoning at some point tho.
Hi there,
I really appreciate you taking the time to let us know your thoughts.
You are absolutely right to say that only a small percentage of our customers use this forum. We take our feedback from a number of different channels such as letters sent into us, Tour Managers who are interacting with our guests, our Product team actually getting out and talking to our customers face to face, surveys, customer satisfaction questionnaires, competitors and many many more places.
You will see that we have made some changes to a number of our holidays such as China, America's Golden West, South Africa, National Parks and more. These changes are as a direct result of people giving us their feedback.
We also introduced Route 66 holiday last year in response to a number of requests on this forum.
I understand that you are disappointed that there are no brand new long haul destinations this time around - but our product range is constantly evolving and so hopefully in the not too distant future there will be something that excites you.
One of the main challenges that we have is to design holidays that will appeal to a good number of people. What I would hate to happen is come up with a new holiday to somewhere a bit new and different, have someone book thinking they have found the holiday of a lifetime only for us to then have to tell them that only 5 people have booked and them not end up travelling.
We desperately want to please all of the people all of the time here - we only exist to put together holidays for our customers to enjoy. However, it takes a lot of time to put together a perfect holiday and so there is a limit to how much we can do for each new brochure. Your holidays with us are meticulously planned and that will never change.
I'm really disappointed that the new brochure hasn't been what you were hoping for and I assure you that I will discuss your thoughts with my colleagues.
Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to give us your thoughts on what we are doing and I hope you will find a holiday to join us on soon.
Thanks
Will