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A little anecdote, from the Magic Kingdom, about the effects of a rapidly falling currency, and another example of how the internet transfers power to the consumer...
Yesterday I bareboat chartered a sailboat for this summer in the Mediterranean. I've been a customer of the same worldwide charter company for several years now. After doing my own research on their UK website (dot.com.uk) I called the same office I've used before in England and made the arrangements, telling them I would call back and make my deposit (in UK Pounds) after they emailed me the details so I could first verify everything was correct.
I went back to the website to check something about the boat, but without realizing it I was on their dot.com USA version of the website, which looks identical at first glance. When I keyed in the specific boat information I discovered, to my great surprise, that the US $ charter rate for the same boat, out of the same port, on the same dates was exactly 49.5% cheaper than the UK-office charter rate converted to Dollars. :eek:
After a series of amusing (for me, not them) telephone calls on both sides of the Atlantic the explanation I finally got was that it's near impossible to get USA tourists to Europe for holidays any more, hence the steep, steep discounts even for peak summer season...but only if you book through the US office. Which is what I did.
Not sure what this does to official US $ PPP, but clearly in some situations the US $ buys more than one might expect. ;)
Yesterday I bareboat chartered a sailboat for this summer in the Mediterranean. I've been a customer of the same worldwide charter company for several years now. After doing my own research on their UK website (dot.com.uk) I called the same office I've used before in England and made the arrangements, telling them I would call back and make my deposit (in UK Pounds) after they emailed me the details so I could first verify everything was correct.
I went back to the website to check something about the boat, but without realizing it I was on their dot.com USA version of the website, which looks identical at first glance. When I keyed in the specific boat information I discovered, to my great surprise, that the US $ charter rate for the same boat, out of the same port, on the same dates was exactly 49.5% cheaper than the UK-office charter rate converted to Dollars. :eek:
After a series of amusing (for me, not them) telephone calls on both sides of the Atlantic the explanation I finally got was that it's near impossible to get USA tourists to Europe for holidays any more, hence the steep, steep discounts even for peak summer season...but only if you book through the US office. Which is what I did.
Not sure what this does to official US $ PPP, but clearly in some situations the US $ buys more than one might expect. ;)
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