This Monday, May 19, the deadline for submitting bids to manage the three lots of the new travel program for the 2025/2026 season will end, which will have 879,213 seats, along with several innovations, such as the flat rate of 50 euros for lower pensions and travels with pets.
Specifically, the companies bidding for the new tender are Ávoris Corporación Empresarial, which already manages the current competition in its entirety through Turismo Social, World2Meet (W2M), and Mundiplan under a new UTE, as well as Travel Live and Senirplan.
As a particularity this season, the maximum number of lots that can be awarded to a bidder will be two, even though they can submit an offer for all three. According to the rules, lot 1 and lot 2 are "incompatible," so "these lots cannot be awarded to the same bidder."
Therefore, after the deadline for submitting bids, open until 23.59 hours, the economic offers of the winning companies will be opened on the 27th of the same month, specifically at 10.00 hours.
As usual, the distribution of all the seats offered will be divided into three lots: lot 1 (peninsular coast) will have the highest number of seats with 440,284, while lot 2 (insular) and lot 3 (escapade and of European origin) will have 228,142 and 210,787 seats, respectively.
Regarding the bidding amount, the bid for the peninsular coast lot will reach 32 million euros, a figure higher than the 24 million euros for the insular lot, while the last lot will be 12.9 million euros.
NOVELTIES: FLAT RATE OF 50 EUROS AND TRAVEL WITH PETS
As a major novelty for the new season, it is worth noting that 7,447 seats will cost 50 euros each for people with lower pensions, regardless of the destination, distributed among all the lots and travel modalities, which "will be allocated to people with economic resources equal to or less than the amount of non-contributory retirement or disability pensions from Social Security."
Likewise, the Imserso program will allow, for the first time, that users of this competition can travel with pets in trips to the peninsular and insular coasts. In this case, seats will be reserved to purchase a trip in the company of these animals, in accordance with regulations, and thus be able to maintain their care.
Therefore, the bidder must reserve 2% of all the seats in lots 1 and 2 for users traveling with a pet or with a pet. For these purposes, a companion animal will be understood as a domestic animal that does not exceed 10 kilograms in weight, including the carrier.
After two months from the effective start of the trips, the winning company will verify the reservations made by users with pets. If they do not cover the 2% of all the seats for each lot, it will be reported to Imserso, which will assess this situation and, if necessary, determine the possibility of offering and selling the seats not reserved for users with pets to the rest of the program users.
MEASURES TO COMBAT SEASONALITY
In pursuit of the economic goal of improving the seasonality of the tourism sector, the new program includes that the winning companies must commit to avoiding the concentration of these trips on a few dates, distributing 36% of the seats in each lot proportionally during each month of the campaign.
It is also indicated that trips in the high season will cost 100 euros more than the same trip in the low season (October, May, and June on the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, and December, January, and February in the Canary Islands).
On the other hand, the hotels offered in the program must have a minimum of three stars and will be required to offer leisure and free time activities to meet the demands of users.
The new tender also represents an increase in the amount that the winning companies will receive to contribute to the sustainability of the sector and the improvement of the quality of the services they offer.
In this regard, it is also planned to strengthen sanctions against the winning companies that provide services in cases where the quality standards established by Imserso are not met.
Finally, the winning companies must edit, layout, print, and distribute informative brochures among users on topics related to active and healthy aging, such as prevention of abuse in older people, gender violence in older women, sexuality in older people, and conclusions of the national congress of older people.
