There is a real (and sometimes large) but also subjective distinction between price gouging and market (supply & demand) pricing. The article discussed higher prices during peak demand school holidays, which isn’t price gouging on its own, and only suggests normal market high-demand pricing. Most importantly, the high demand pricing is regular and predictable: everyone knows when the school holidays are coming and they know in advance when the prices will be higher. Price gouging is most often used to describe selling basic needs at very extreme prices during an emergency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging
Also important to note here, the UK has anti price gouging laws. This doesn’t mean Center Parcs isn’t violating them, but without any specific evidence, I’d guess a good default assumption is that what they’re doing isn’t price gouging by the law’s definition.
> The article discussed higher prices during peak demand school holidays, which isn’t price gouging on its own, and only suggests normal market high-demand pricing. Most importantly, the high demand pricing is regular and predictable [..] Price gouging is most often used to describe selling basic needs at very extreme prices during an emergency.
This is more a defense of price-gouging by bringing in market-based price fixing arguments than a strong argument to defend a "fair" price.
We can take the price of insulin in the US as an example fitting that description:
- It is a "normal market" high-demand pricing
- The demand is regular and predictable.
- There no emergency (except for the diabetics that cannot afford the medicine they desperately need)
And yet, at 10x the average price of insulin on the European market, it is clearly price-gouging.
Aside from emergencies, there are other scenarios where the term price gouging is justified, as described in the Wikipedia article I posted. Those include monopoly pricing, and excessive beyond fair market pricing, and more. Your example of insulin is one of monopoly pricing. Obviously monopoly pricing of insulin isn’t subject to seasonal demand and wasn’t caused by an acute geographic emergency, which is why calling it price gouging is justified in that case, and why your example isn’t very relevant to this article.
The article wasn’t even about price gouging anyway, that’s a slightly click-bait title, and it never provided evidence and instead went off discussing investment financing at length.
It’s absolutely standard practice, and considered “fair”, for hotels to charge more money during busy seasons and busy weeks, globally. You need more evidence than the existence of high-demand market pricing in order to justify calling what’s in the article ‘price gouging’. I have in no way defended price gouging. If you’re anti-free-market and don’t believe prices should change based on demand, that’s fine, but that’s a different debate entirely.
