Sunsail or Neilson

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TeeRev

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We did several Med flotilla's in the Ionian, the Saronic and Croatia a few years ago when learning to sail but more recently have been into winter bareboating in the Caribbean and diving/windsurfing in Egypt. Swmbo wants to do something different so mainly for the social aspect we're planning on a one or two week flotilla in late June.

Latesail have just offered me some pretty good looking deals on both Sunsail and Neilson flotillas in Turkey, (Turgutreis and Marmaris), Kremlik and Dubrovnik in Croatia, the Northern Aegean, the Sporades and the Ionian, we've never used either company so any comparisons, comments and advice on them and the various areas would be much appreciated.
 
TeeRev said:
We did several Med flotilla's in the Ionian, the Saronic and Croatia a few years ago when learning to sail but more recently have been into winter bareboating in the Caribbean and diving/windsurfing in Egypt. Swmbo wants to do something different so mainly for the social aspect we're planning on a one or two week flotilla in late June.

Latesail have just offered me some pretty good looking deals on both Sunsail and Neilson flotillas in Turkey, (Turgutreis and Marmaris), Kremlik and Dubrovnik in Croatia, the Northern Aegean, the Sporades and the Ionian, we've never used either company so any comparisons, comments and advice on them and the various areas would be much appreciated.
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Haven't been with Neilson at all nor Sunsail for many years (see http://www.mjcoon.plus.com/page38.htm). I think Marmaris is a more interesting area than Turgutreis though of course the latter is handy for Bodrum. But I've enjoyed sailing on flotilla in all those areas and bareboat in some of them.

Mike.
 
We've been with both Sunsail and Neilson and found them much the same. I'd go with the combination of location, boat, price that's best for you .... and have a great time!!
 
No experience of Neilson but done many flotillas with Sunsail and always found them excellent. Boats fine, lead crews from brilliant to interesting, but always a positive part of the holiday. Favourite was probably the Two Country flotilla from Turgetreis three or four years ago. Longer sails, plenty of wind and some great stops in both Greece and Turkey. Only thing I would say is that I believe there is increasing tendency (or increasingly obvious) tendency to choose restaurants for 'group' meals on purely commercial grounds. They are of course entirely optional and I would wholeheartedly encourage a bit of research and mutinies when the designated place is clearly the inferior option. Caused a bit of consternation at the 'designated' restaurant and with lead crew when we did that the first time last year but I reckon if enough people do it it'll reduce the practice and/or drive up quality.
 
Location-wise I'd do Kremik over Dubrovnik every time (but am a bit biased having just signed up to my third year at Kremik marina). Dubrovnik is lovely but I prefer the sailing, islands, anchorages and towns in mid-Croatia.
 
Might be worth checking out Neilsons viability. They are experiencing some difficulties as part of Thomas Cook group.
They are ABTA bonded so that reduces risk but it would be a bummer if you'd booked something to find there was a snag.
 
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We did a Stay and Sail with Neilson at Sivota, 1 week hotel with all watersports thrown in and 1 week on a new Dufour 34. Perfect honeymoon for us, they even threw tons of flower petals over the whole room, and a champagne choccies basket.
Faultless, food, sailing, windsurfing, PADI course. Highly recommended.
 
Neilson seem to have a very interesting sales strategy that I've not heard of before, apparently it's called "Dynamic Pricing" but I'm not quite sure they have fully thought it through.

Late afternoon yesterday Latesail emailed me the best offers they had available for my preferred dates of 22nd or 29th June, we looked at them carefully and the one that appealed to us most was a Dufour 375 on a Neilson Marmaris flotilla for the week of the 29th at £799 per person.

I phoned Latesail just after lunch today to book it and was not unreasonably told they would have to check that it was still available and they would call me back, a few minutes later the call came and I was told that, yes the boat was still available but £799 was yesterdays price offer and today it had changed to £1199 per person, according to Latesail this happens quite a lot, sometimes up but sometimes down and it makes their life very difficult.

It appears that Neilson have the impression that as soon as they think someone is on the hook they will buy at any price, I wasn't that desperate to go to Marmaris so have declined their kind offer of an £800 price hike and am re-thinking our sailing holiday plans.
 
It's a highly competitive industry, so there's very little to choose between them. Choose by place, price and size of boat.

The biggest variable will be the quality of the lead crew. Neilson's regularly win "Investors in People" awards for their staff development and training schemes, which is not common in the holiday industry. So maybe that counts in their favour.

But I'm biased. Some 20 years ago I worked with Neilson! Since then I've chartered regularly from most of the flotilla companies in a variety of locations. And seen only two weak lead crews out of about 20 charters.
 
TeeRev said:
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It appears that Neilson have the impression that as soon as they think someone is on the hook they will buy at any price, I wasn't that desperate to go to Marmaris so have declined their kind offer of an £800 price hike and am re-thinking our sailing holiday plans.
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Lucky Ryanair don't charter boats then...... they do that with internet hits on flights, raising the prices at a flicker of interest.
 
FullCircle said:
Lucky Ryanair don't charter boats then...... they do that with internet hits on flights, raising the prices at a flicker of interest.
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I've seen that too but not Ryanair. I switched to another PC and found the original lower price still there. back to the old PC and another tenner added on, presumably to convince me that other people were buying the cheaper tickets so I needed to commit ASAP.
 
Don't think there is anything sinister about what is happening. They are just following a set of rules. Remember examining a PhD on modelling dynamic pricing in the airline industry. The objective is to maximise revenues by progressively increasing prices as demand for a fixed supply grows and then sell any surplus at a price over variable cost. Dynamic modelling of price/demand is very complex so it needs to be simplified into an operational procedure.

Therefore you set a low price for a proportion of your capacity (seats on a particular flight, boats available in a particular week etc) to attract those customers who are prepared to commit early. Once the number offered at that price is sold, the price moves up to the next bracket and so on until a point close to the flight/charter date when the price might drop again to sell the last few seats. Those with long memories will recall Laker Airways when you could stand in line at Gatwick in the hope of getting an empty seat at a knockdown price an hour before takeoff.

So what you have experienced is one day there is one boat left at the old price, but before you got back to them the next day it was sold so the next available one is at the higher price. I have experienced similar with Easyjet where an enquiry for a seat for one person shows at a lower price than if you ask for 2 - simply because there is only one left on the flight at the lower price. The algorithm in the computer automatically quotes the only price available for two seats.

You have to remember that you are dealing through an agent - one of many who might put in a request to the operator, so what he tells you only reflects what is available at the time. Of course it can be frustrating, but arguably the system maximises sales and minimises waste on time and capacity constrained products.
 
Tranona said:
Don't think there is anything sinister about what is happening. They are just following a set of rules. Remember examining a PhD on modelling dynamic pricing in the airline industry. The objective is to maximise revenues by progressively increasing prices as demand for a fixed supply grows and then sell any surplus at a price over variable cost. Dynamic modelling of price/demand is very complex so it needs to be simplified into an operational procedure.

Therefore you set a low price for a proportion of your capacity (seats on a particular flight, boats available in a particular week etc) to attract those customers who are prepared to commit early. Once the number offered at that price is sold, the price moves up to the next bracket and so on until a point close to the flight/charter date when the price might drop again to sell the last few seats. Those with long memories will recall Laker Airways when you could stand in line at Gatwick in the hope of getting an empty seat at a knockdown price an hour before takeoff.

So what you have experienced is one day there is one boat left at the old price, but before you got back to them the next day it was sold so the next available one is at the higher price. I have experienced similar with Easyjet where an enquiry for a seat for one person shows at a lower price than if you ask for 2 - simply because there is only one left on the flight at the lower price. The algorithm in the computer automatically quotes the only price available for two seats.

You have to remember that you are dealing through an agent - one of many who might put in a request to the operator, so what he tells you only reflects what is available at the time. Of course it can be frustrating, but arguably the system maximises sales and minimises waste on time and capacity constrained products.
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I think you may have misunderstood the point, unless I've misunderstood yours of course. Dynamic pricing is understood, but the practice of increasing prices online when only you are interested is the underhand bit. Essentially you get an online quote, don't accept it and come back an hour or day later. You find the price has gone up so are fooled into thinking the cheapest seat has gone to somebody else, so feel an urgency to book ASAP. Indeed when you look again you find it's gone up again.

But it's all an illusion because if you get a quote from another PC or iPad or whatever the original low price is available to you. Similarly (on the site where I found this) once I'd cleared the cookies the original low price was back.
 
RupertW said:
I think you may have misunderstood the point, unless I've misunderstood yours of course. Dynamic pricing is understood, but the practice of increasing prices online when only you are interested is the underhand bit. Essentially you get an online quote, don't accept it and come back an hour or day later. You find the price has gone up so are fooled into thinking the cheapest seat has gone to somebody else, so feel an urgency to book ASAP. Indeed when you look again you find it's gone up again.

But it's all an illusion because if you get a quote from another PC or iPad or whatever the original low price is available to you. Similarly (on the site where I found this) once I'd cleared the cookies the original low price was back.
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The original quote about price being hiked due to dynamic pricing reported results as quoted by Latesail.

You've now quoted a new example - which suggests something different. You're suggesting that a cookie is being dropped on your pooter/terminal, and is subsequently being used to create a higher price on a second enquiry - presumably within a certain time scale.

Which company was this with? And how loog ago? They have to quote their cookie policies and uses nowadays - to minimise this sort of behaviour, among other things.
 
jimbaerselman said:
The original quote about price being hiked due to dynamic pricing reported results as quoted by Latesail.

You've now quoted a new example - which suggests something different. You're suggesting that a cookie is being dropped on your pooter/terminal, and is subsequently being used to create a higher price on a second enquiry - presumably within a certain time scale.

Which company was this with? And how loog ago? They have to quote their cookie policies and uses nowadays - to minimise this sort of behaviour, among other things.
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I was responding to FullCircles post about Ryannair where he mentioned exactly the behaviour I had found myself. The two sites which I found did this were cheapflights.co.uk (which could have been the links it took you too) and Easyjet - both over two years ago as we now tend to decide on dates and book on the spot now to avoid this.

Whether they just automate what Latesail do manually I do not know, or whether Latesail really has sold a boat and is therefore actually using dynamic pricing openly.
 
It seems that there are a lot of theories as to how this Dynamic Pricing thing works but to clarify Latesail's business model as I understand it.

On their website they sell bareboat yacht charter and flotilla holidays on a late booked and discounted basis on behalf of tour operators and yacht charter operators who have not sold the trips themselves, usually the later you book the cheaper the charter or holiday becomes, particularly in the case of flight inclusive trips as the operator will still have to pay for aircraft seats, whether they are used or not.

I have booked several trips, both bareboat and flight inclusive with Latesail going back to when they first started and have never had a problem like this before. A couple of years ago through them we late booked a Sunsail week for two on an Oceanis 393 in the BVI's which included the Virgin and Liat flights and was just under £1,500, you would have paid almost that for the flights alone.

Normally Latesail do not divulge the tour operator or charterers name until you have actually booked but as I am someone who likes to know what I'm buying I carry out research to find out the original providers name to make sure that they are reputable and that I will get what I'm paying for, that's how I found out it was Neilson.

Latesail didn't sound over happy with Neilson's Dynamic Pricing system and of course the tour and charter operators do continue to offer these boats and trips on their own websites, perhaps Neilson did indeed have someone else interested enough in this boat yesterday to pay the higher price as it is not listed on their website today.
 
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