To think that if a competition is hosted by Mumsnet the prize should be accessible to people with children?

[secretscwirrels]

I just clicked on a competition link. It looks wonderful, a Mark Warner holiday in a 5* hotel in Greece.
Just before I clicked to submit it I looked at the Ts and Cs.
You have to take the prize this summer. If your children are older than 11 you have to pay more and
Excluded departure dates; 25th May, 27th July ? 30th August
So you can't travel in school holidays.
Not much use to a large percentage of MN then

not sure what happened to my grammar there

Well I didn't enter it.
It just seems a bit disingenuous to promote a fabulous holiday on a parenting website which excludes many (I never said all) of it's target market from being able to take the prize. It's a form of advertising after all and could be counter productive if it annoys those it is meant to attract.

I can see OP's point, though. Mark Warner aren't donating the prize out of the goodness of their hearts; they want the opportunity to market specifically to Mumsnet's demographic of (largely) families with at least one school age child (would need to check the MN census figures to be certain of that 'largely', admittedly). So they should suck it up and actually give a prize that can be used by the people they are trying to market at.

As drjohnsonscat says, it actually puts me off Mark Warner a bit so it may be something of a false economy in their marketing budget.

I won this comp last year and am more than happy to pay the £89 for 12yo ds to go.

Have you seen the price of these holidays?

And as others have said not all members have school age children.