The short answer to the question I was asked, is, in many cases, yes. I would spend more to be on an SD trip. The reason is, in many cases, I would still feel I was getting the best "value" even though I was paying more.
The thing I tend to come up the most short on at this point in my life is time (this question was PM'd to me a week ago, and I just now have the time to sit down and answer it). So, my time is worth a lot to me. To find that same trip at $318 dollars less, I would have to spend MY time researching. Then once I found the $318 savings, I would have to spend more time reading all the fine print of BOTH trips to make sure what appeared to be a savings really was. Then I'd have to spend the time booking it. To put a monitary value on this, my employeer tells me my time is worth about $48/hour to them. I'm worth at LEAST that much to myself, so I"ll go with that. Say it takes 4 hours to do all the research and book the trip. I'm already down to a $126 difference in trips. I am very happy to pay someone $192 to have that 4 hours to do local diving here, or go running, or read, or even just sleep! But say, I go for that less expensive trip. Instead of $1300, I get the same trip for $1000; BUT, I have no one to travel with, and no one on the other end of the trip that cares about this. I'm a pretty shy person, so the chance for me getting to know complete strangers and hanging out with them is pretty slim. Plus, more than likely everyone is paired up. Not to mention, that especially when you start traveling outside the US, I don't feel comfortable traveling alone. Being able to travel with a group that has similar issues to me (all single, wanting to take dive trips, not wanting to travel alone) is worth every penny of that $318 as that $1000 would have NO value to me, mostly because I probably wouldn't go, and if I did, would not have a very good time. To me, it would be a terrible value to spend $1000 then not enjoby it.
Now, I realize to many, time is not as important as it is to me. I would imagine that the value one places on time is going to be directly proportional to the amount of disposable income one has. And I am aware that many have no problems traveling alone and meeting people and enjoying the trip for the diving with or without friends. I would expect these people to define value much differently than I do.
I also think there are probably a lot of reasons one would/could find a trip that SD has offered for less $$. I don't know anything about the travel industry, but I think pricing can change from minute to minute, and there are always WEB only offers that INDIVIDUALS can take advantage of. Chances are the cheaper price AFTER SD has posted their priced could be due to the hotel not booking as expected (couldn't you also find a higher price if the opposite were true?) Because overall, SD gives me the best value for $ spent, I think I would choose to support them in most cases with my travel just to help make sure they are able to stay around for the next time
Soooo...this is my long winded answer to how I define value. Anyone else??
Edited by AliKat, 30 July 2005 - 06:53 PM.