The Lincolnshire Guide > Editors Blog > Should we charge tourists excessive prices? No.

Should we charge tourists excessive prices? No.

It is always fair to say that prices go up, year on year.  That is pretty much a given.  Whether it is food, utility bills, council tax or whatever.  Inflation causes price rises.  Fair enough.

Something else that also causes price rises is the change in seasons.  The Lincolnshire Coastline is one of the jewels of the County's crown, with many thousands of visitors flocking to the seaside resorts over the summer period.  For many caravan sites, bed and breakfasts and hotels the season began on 1st March.  Demand is high, so prices increase and people have a choice - they can go on holiday or choose not to.  Obviously in Lincolnshire we hope they choose to visit us.  The main resorts get clogged on busy weeks and weekends throughout the year so locals know to get in early or avoid completely.

However, there is one cynical move that - to put it plainly - profiteers pull every year and that is the price of fuel in the coastal strip.  Forecourt prices rocket come the season and, typically, it has happened again.  The main culprits are not the big names (though not blameless either and are known to locals to pull the same trick) and not the backstreet garages who have higher costs and can't buy in bulk anyway - but the mid-level garages.

I travelled into Louth on Friday of last week and in the morning petrol and diesel at one well-known petrol station on the A16 was 118.9p a litre.  The same garage was selling fuel at 121.9p a litre in the afternoon. 

Had there been a rise in duty?  No.  Had there been a rise in oil prices?  No.  Had the main garages put their prices up?  No.  Was this the day when people travel to the coast for the first weekend of the season?  Yes.

Upon checking around on my travels around the area that weekend I could find no other garages that had put their prices up.  Not main garages, nor backstreet garages.  The backstreet garages, with their high overheads and inability to buy in the same levels of bulk were now a good few pence per litre cheaper.  So the garage on the A16 (which brings thousands of visitors to the Skegness area each month from South Yorkshire, etc) and the one further south on the A16 (on a junction with a road that brings thousands of customers in each month from the Midlands area) had put their prices up in unison to cash in.

So you can go to one of these garages and buy petrol and diesel or travel into Skegness and get fuel for a - wait for it - 11p a litre less!

So what am I moaning about?  Well the local people who need to run around but cannot get into Skegness or any other main town (or may not want to go into town) have to pay an excess premium (over what they pay in the winter months) because the garages want to cash in on tourists who may not have realised they needed more fuel or want to top up.  Equally, people who are fleeced when on holiday do not return home and say "I will return there again".  Those two garages will see no trade from me, my family, friends or colleagues.  Imagine how many cars that is and how many tanks of fuel.  People who I have spoken to who live local to these forecourts do not use them either for this reason.

I am interested in seeing Lincolnshire have a bumper summer all round, and in these days where people are watching every penny I say fleece customers, be they hotel guests, caravan hirers or motorists, at your peril because they won't come back again and what you gain in excess profit is probably less than you lose through greed.

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