The offers board, and how to reserve a vacation package 24/7

An offer reaches this page after an operating company has put a figure, a set of dates and a list of what the figure covers in writing to this office. When that happens the entry goes up here with those numbers on it, and the form at the foot of the page lets you reserve a vacation package 24/7, whether the trip you want is standing on this board or somewhere else along the whole ladder, top to bottom.

Most weeks the board is short. Some weeks it is empty, and the page says so plainly instead of filling the space with something dressed up to look like an offer.

The four tests an entry has to clear

The first test is provenance. The figure has to come from the company that will actually run the trip, in a message this office can point to afterwards, and not from a summary of one. If a number reached us by way of somebody's recollection of a telephone call, it stays off.

The second test is completeness. An entry states what the figure covers and what it leaves to the traveller, in the same paragraph and at the same size. Ground arrangements, guiding days and the beds are itemized. The traveller's own flight sits outside the figure every time, because the operating company prices the trip on the ground and the air arrangement stays the traveller's to make.

The third test is a live departure. The operating company has to confirm that the dates on the entry are dates it is running, on the day the entry goes up. Trips on the upper rungs, where a permit or one boat service a week run by that company under its own licence sets the calendar, tend to fail this test for months at a stretch and then pass it for a fortnight.

The fourth test is terms. Whatever the operator's cancellation and change terms are for that departure, they have to be written down and readable before the entry appears, and they stay attached to it. Those terms belong to the operator rather than to this office, and how the two fit together is set out at the cancellation terms in full.

An entry that clears all four goes up. An entry that clears three waits until it clears the fourth. Nothing here has been shortened, sweetened or rounded off to make it read better than the message it came from.

What this page leaves out, and what those devices are

There is no countdown on this board. A countdown is a statement that an offer ends at a named minute. What actually ends an offer here is the operating company closing its allocation, and that happens when it happens; nobody in this office can know the minute in advance, so a printed one would be an invented one.

There is no counter of remaining places either. A counter is a claim about inventory. This office holds no inventory: the beds, the vehicles and the guiding days all belong to the operating company, and the count moves without anyone telling us. A number we cannot check is a guess with a decimal point on it.

There are no struck figures. A struck figure is an arithmetic comparison, one number set against another number, and this office states a single number, the one the operating company will bill the traveller once the arrangement is confirmed. That company bills directly and on its own terms; this office takes no payment at any stage and holds no card details.

And nothing here is ordered by value. The five rungs describe how much of a trip you run yourself, and one rung is not better than another. A fortnight with a guide most days and a permit with a weekly crossing behind it are different kinds of trip, not two grades of the same one. the five rungs side by side sets out what each rung means in practice.

Using the board

Every entry names the rung it sits on, the month, the length in nights, the figure per person, and the kind of company that operates it. Read the entry, then send the request; the form takes the trip name and the dates you have in mind, and a sentence about who is travelling is more use to us than a long message.

If the board is empty on the day you look, the form still works. Most of what comes to this office is for trips that never stood on this page at all, and an empty board says nothing about what can be arranged for a given month.

What follows is the same for a board entry as for anything else in the catalogue. This office checks the departure with the operating company, comes back to you with what is available and at what figure, and places the reservation only after you say yes to that figure in writing. The sequence is written out step by step at how a request becomes a reservation, and whatever people ask before committing is set out at the questions this office is asked most.

The request form takes booking requests 24 hours a day, every day of the year. It is a form, not a telephone line, and a person reads what it collects and answers within one business day.

Every request is answered within one business day, including the ones that arrive at three in the morning. If you would rather describe the trip in your own words than take an entry off the board, request a trip quote 24/7 carries the longer form.