Big holiday companies fared badly in a consumer satisfaction survey conducted by Holiday Which? magazine.
While the magazine's readers generally spoke highly of small, independent holiday companies, they were far less enamoured of some of the major tour operators. Only one in five said they would recommend Airtours or Thomas Cook-run JMC.
And only 26% would recommend First Choice, 28% Cosmos and 34% Thomas Cook. In contrast, 100% recommended Greek holiday specialist company Laskarina, while 92% recommended VFB which mainly deals in French holidays.
First Choice's Exodus operation was also highly recommended (by 91%) as was MyTravel's Swiss Travel Service (86%).
The figures were based on responses from 11,167 readers and related to package holidays of four nights or more abroad since September 2003.
Only 44 readers had travelled with Laskarina and 88 with VFB. This compared with 456 who had travelled with Airtours, 462 with First Choice and 570 with Thomas Cook.
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