After 48 hours queuing on Dublin's Baggot Street, Mr Seamus Carr was rewarded for his loyalty to Budget Travel yesterday with a complimentary family holiday to Portugal.
The Baldoyle holiday-maker received the gift after withstanding not just the wind and rain, but also the lure of a rival tour operator which offered him a free holiday with his wife and two children if he agreed to be photographed leaving the queue.
Turning down the offer from Panorama on Wednesday, he said he "must be nuts" but was putting his faith in Budget. And he wasn't disappointed.
Mr Carr was one of nine customers who received free holidays after queueing from Tuesday morning until the opening of the Budget summer holiday sale yesterday. Mr Paul Ryan from Clondalkin, who headed the queue and persuaded Mr Carr to stay loyal to Budget, received a family holiday to Mexico.
Some 16,500 customers booked package tours with Budget in the first three hours of trading yesterday. The company estimated it had received 40,000 bookings from travel agents by the end of business yesterday. Budget has now sold 120,000 seats since its family brochures were launched before Christmas.
Mr Niall McDonnell, chief executive of Panorama, said it had made the offer to Mr Carr "in order to get a bit of publicity. But you have to take your hat off to Budget. It's hard to get one over them".
He denied the company had increased its offer to an all-expenses paid trip to a five-star hotel.
