What a figure is made of
Vacation Package Prices, Taken Apart
Each price quoted here starts from two people sharing a room. Here is what sits inside one, what sits outside it, and what moves it between the day you ask and the day you book.
What the from figure is
The lowest per person price at which we have actually placed that trip in the last season, on two people sharing a room or a cabin, before flights unless the page says otherwise.
It is not a promise and it is not an average. It is the bottom of a real range, and the page it sits on tells you what pushes you up it.
What sits inside every figure on this site
- Accommodation
- Every night listed on the trip page, in the grade named there
- Transport inside the trip
- The legs the page lists: boats, trains, coaches, internal flights, the hire car where there is one
- The meals the page names
- Stated meal by meal, never as a vague board basis
- Guiding the page names
- With the hours, because a half day means different things to different operators
- Entry fees the page names
- Which on some trips is a large part of the figure
- Somebody reachable
- During the hours printed on this site
What sits outside it, on every trip
- International flights
- Quoted separately once your dates are fixed, because a figure printed today would be wrong tomorrow
- Meals not named on the page
- Deliberately, on the trips where eating out is the point
- Anything medical
- Including altitude medication, vaccinations and antimalarials
- Entry documents
- Yours to arrange and to confirm
- Travel insurance
- This office does not arrange it
- Gratuities
- Named on each page where they are expected, with a figure
What moves the figure between asking and booking
- The month
- The largest single mover on most of these trips, and worth more than any negotiation
- Room or cabin grade
- The second largest, especially on the two ship trips
- Traveling alone
- Single supplements are heavier on safari and under canvas than they are in hotels
- How far ahead
- Some operators price by how full the departure is, so an early answer is worth more than a late haggle
- Exchange rates
- On trips priced in another currency, which the proposal will tell you
What this office charges
Nothing, at any point. No consultation fee, no research fee, no booking fee, no card fee, no amendment fee of ours.
The income is a share of the operator's own margin, released after you have traveled. That has one consequence worth stating plainly: this office is paid the same whether you take the cheaper room or the dearer one, so there is nothing behind a recommendation except the recommendation.
Where the money goes
You pay each operator directly. This site takes no payment, holds no card details, and has no field anywhere for a card number. The operator issues your documents and your receipt, and the operator's terms decide what happens if the trip is canceled. Those terms are printed in your proposal before you commit to anything.
The Sun Traveller sells nothing that it operates. The flights, the hotels, the ships, the vehicles and the guides described on this site all belong to other companies. This office finds them, checks them, books them and stays with you until you fly, and it owns no part of any of them.