Tui price increase just before paying

[Doris86]

Anyone else had this?

Found a holiday on Tui website. Came to £3500 in total. So tried to book it, and it said it just had to reconfirm current prices. Then it told me unfortunately the price had increased by £1900 and the total price was now £5400!

Tried again on my husbands phone to make sure it wasn’t cookie related. Again started at £3500 but after re confirming prices it increased to £5400.

Needless to say I didn’t book it. I went to Onthebeach instead and paid £3700 for the exact same holiday.

If Onthebeach can advertise the price you actually pay, I’m not sure why Tui can’t. It’s not like it was a small difference!

They should not be allowed to do that. Fair enough if the price has actually gone up, but they are actually false advertising

Possibilities: taxation, surge pricing.

More than likely: they're being meanies but remaining within the word of the law in being so.

I've seen a few TikTok videos about the same thing recently. It also happens on LoveHolidays.

I can just about understand the price going up but the fact that you checked again and it did the same thing is very suspicious. There must be a regulator you can report it to.

Taxes don’t suddenly add £1900 to a holiday. Surge pricing - perhaps, but that’s a big surge. And the original cheaper price (which you can’t actually get) is still advertised on their website.

Maybe the flight? As some are operated by other airlines so possibly at that point it gets the flight price from the third party

I got the exact same flights through On The Beach for £1700 less.

Yes! This happened to me last week. As I went to pay it went up by £1k

Hmmm. Have you looked at the small print? There're probably some very well buried conditions in there.

It's usually cached pricing/availability. The system "holds" prices that are shown on the website. These are updated regularly but not constantly. It makes it quicker for you to go through the booking process.

However, if any part of that holiday is no longer available, when the system does its final check (usually just before payment), it'll either fail the booking or return what it can find - had the room type changed? - leading to a price jump.

Not all operators have access to the same number of rooms at a hotel, and TUI UK doesn't have "live availability" connections with hotels. So if TUI has 5 rooms and LoveHolidays has 5 rooms, when TUI have sold out, LH may still have theirs available.

Ideally the TUI system would be smart enough to know that if a booking fails because the new price doesn't match the cache price, it deletes the cache price. Clearly it isn't though, and at this time of year, holidays are being sold quicker than the cache gets updated, hence the lower price still showing.