Tag Archives: cheap holidays

Travel

The art of cheap holidays: Part 3

Leave a comment

In my previous posts I explained how I saved money (and how you can too) by looking around for cheap flights and accommodation. Using cashback sites like TopCashBack and Quidco also saves further on hotels and car hire.

Further savings can be made on car hire.

I previously touched on fuel policy options. These ‘unforeseen extras’ can cost significantly. Other things to watch out for are:

  • GPS/SatNav: do you need this? Are you going to get hopelessly lost? Driving abroad and navigating on the ‘wrong’ side of the road can be tricky and often stressful – especially if you’ve got kids in the back yelling ‘are we there yet‘ and ‘Daaaaad, I need to go to the toilet‘. Places are often not as well signed posted as in the UK. If you arrive at night/early hours of the morning and it’s dark, navigation is further complicated. But SatNav systems are often charged out at extortionate per-day prices. If you have a standalone unit at home, take it with you! Just make sure that the relevant maps are downloaded on the unit before you go. Or purchase a data package for your phone for your holiday period, and use Google maps or a similar mapping/GPS app.
  • Children’s car seat/booster: A legal requirement if you have kids, these can be charged out at ludicrous prices: frustrating when you can buy a basic booster for a tenner back home. I think I had to pay about £40 extra on a recent car hire for a week in Spain. Look around; some car hire companies include these free of charge. If not, could you squeeze yours in your luggage and take it with you? Do you even need a hire car? With the child seat costs factored in, might it be cheaper to get a taxi/transfer/bus?
  • Insurance: Do you really need the extra cover? Basic insurance cover is usually sufficient, depending on your driving skills that is! Most car hire companies will try and sell you extra cover when you arrive at their office to collect the car, usually scaring you into it by ‘blocking’ a huge amount on your credit card as a deposit, or quoting a massive excess in the case of any claim. Make sure you check what is covered before you get there and decide whether you really need any extra cover. Look around; some companies offer significantly more cover as standard. Check local road conditions: for example, on a recent trip to Iceland, I was advised that there’s lots of gravel roads and you should consider the extra gravel damage cover. As it was, we only went for 2 days and stuck to main roads (apart from once or twice, where I drove carefully) so opted for the cheaper basic cover.

Also note that if you do have an accident and have to pay for car repairs, your holiday insurance may cover this.

Another money saving aspect to consider is baggage costs, especially where the cheap airlines are involved. Hold baggage on Ryanair and Easyjet can be considerably expensive, but they do allow a reasonably large bag on board for free – and Ryanair now even allow an additional smaller bag to be taken onboard. Do you really need to pay for a suitcase to go in the hold? If it’s a 5 day holiday, can you fit enough clothes in the onboard baggage?

I can.

In fact, I managed a 10 day trip once (post coming soon!), although admittedly I did wash and dry (on the balcony) a few clothes whilst there.

Which I’m sure those with sensitive noses would be relieved to hear 🙂

Mind you, I don’t exactly have to pack shampoo or a hairdryer…

Wizzair does some excellent cheap flights, particularly to Central and Eastern Europe, but watch out – they’ve recently reduced their onboard baggage allowance to much less than the other budget airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet. I still would recommend them though for their excellent service; their inflight food has recently been upgraded too and offers a more premium menu. They also have some incredibly cheap options to more exotic locations such as Dubai and Tel Aviv if you are willing to go indirect, via Budapest, Bucharest or Sofia.

Airport car parking if also something to take into account when planning your holiday expenditure.

If you are only away for a short break, driving and paying airport car parking fees can often be cheaper than paying for taxis or trains fares to the airport – especially if you look around and use the cash back sites.

I usually google ‘airport car parking‘ and the destination airport name and make a note of the first four or five companies that come up. I then open up my old friend TopCashBack and search for those merchants, and check which ones are offering the most cash-back. I’ll then open their sites via the TopCashBack links, enter the necessary details for a quote, and compare prices. Often they are very similar but one site may have as much as 20% cashback compared to another’s 4%, so I know which one I’ll go for…

If you’re in no rush then you can usually get the cheaper car parking that’s off site and requires a transfer. Just bear in mind though that you often have to wait 10-15 mins for the transfer, and the transfer can take 10-15 mins depending on traffic, so leave enough time for airport check-in/security. There seems to be more and more on site or “meet and greet” services these days; if you can get a decent cashback offer and bring the price down then these may be worth considering.

I’ve not covered hostels or backpacking or hitchhiking in any of my posts.

Why?

I have no personal experience of them. I’m not going to blog about something I know nothing about; I will only write about things that I have a particular interest in and have done the research or have some experience in. Of course you can save money hitchhiking. Of course you can save money sleeping in a shared hostel. But there are pros and cons of each which I’m not experienced to advise on.

All I can advise is on my own travel experiences in the last few years and that I’ve managed to travel far and wide, frequently and relatively cheap, based on these money saving tips.

Hopefully you’ll be able to save some cash too 🙂

Happy Holidays!

 

 

Travel

The art of cheap holidays: Part 2

Leave a comment

In my previous post about the art of cheap holidays I mentioned taking my daughter away in the peak holiday season.

Package holidays, and indeed, flights and hotel prices, are significantly inflated at this time of year. Finding a cheap holiday is not easy.

Yet I managed to save significantly, and still have a fabulous holiday.

I had an available date range of several weeks. I knew we wanted somewhere warm. I knew that we wanted a pool, and to be near a beach.

I also knew that we should find something self catering. Previous experience has taught me that my daughter is quite happy to wake up and play/draw for an hour or two before eating breakfast and wanting to go out to the pool/beach etc. I’m also no longer hungry first thing in the morning, so there’s absolutely no point having to get up early and rush to get to breakfast in a hotel serving at limited times. Similarly, hotel food is at best average, and I prefer the holiday atmosphere of going out in the evening for a meal. Having self catering facilities means we can save ourselves money on breakfast and lunch and eat when we want. If the evening eating out options also prove to be poor or expensive, we can also eat in on the occasional evening.

Think about what you really want for your holiday. Do you really need a pool? Are you going to eat out? Do you need to be on the beach? If you’re only going for a day or two, and staying in the town, do you need a car? Don’t spend extra money on a hotel with a pool if you’re going to be at the beach all day and not use it.

After scouring the web for flights, mainly using Skyscanner and checking the cheap airlines such as Ryanair, Flybe and Easyjet, I had found quite a few reasonably priced flights to various destinations in Portugal, Spain, the south of France, Italy, Turkey and Greece. Some I ruled out due to the flights out being from tricky to reach airports, or flying to destinations where I’d then have to travel for hours to get to the final destination. Others were ticked off because of inconvenient flight times; travelling with a six year old at 4am is a pain. Similarly the longer flights (4 hours to some Greek islands, Canaries etc) weren’t ideal, especially if they weren’t flying from a local airport.

Eventually I had a choice of 5 Spainish destinations, a Greek and a Turkish destination.

I started looking for hotels.

The Greek island hotels were few and far between; anything any good had already been booked up, long in advance (school holiday period remember!). The remaining hotels were shabby, miles from anywhere, or extortionately priced.

Next stop, Turkey. Hotels seemed to be very well priced. But I didn’t know much about the resorts and it wasn’t clear if there were in a reasonable location and easy to reach from the airport. More research would be required, but the flight times and flight prices weren’t great and I decided to put this on the back burner.

I decided to look at the Spanish options. This had the cheapest flight prices by far, but I soon discovered hotel prices were significantly more than in Turkey. However, I knew more about the region and where to look and with the cheaper flights managed to find something suitable at a similar total price.

There were 3 good flight options available to the Barcelona area; Barcelona’s direct airport; El Prat, Girona to the north, and Reus to the south. I didn’t know so much about the other airport options/areas, and a quick search didn’t yield many hotel options.

I decided to focus my hotel search on the Costa Brava, reachable from the 3 airports around Barcelona.

Normally I would book a minimum of a 3 star hotel and wouldn’t even consider a 1 or 2 star. When I travel with my girlfriend we tend to look for 4 stars to ensure we have the comfort of a double bed – there’s not many 3 stars with a ‘proper’ double bed we’ve found. With my daughter though obviously we were after two singles so I started checking the 3 stars and above hotels.

Due to the 3 airport options, I had a broad search area, but the summer holiday popularity had taken it’s toll on the accommodation available. Particularly as I was adamant on the self catering option.

There were plenty of hotels in Barcelona itself available for a good price. But most didn’t have a pool – essential for my daughter – or a balcony – essential for me in the evenings to escape to with a book and a glass of wine after she’d gone to bed. Nor were any self catering.

I found a few options in the coastal resorts but they were considerably expensive. I then found a handful of B&B or even half board hotel options that were a similar price, or not much more – especially when you considered the cost of the food.

I was tempted to book one of these, but I always like to check the reviews online first, such as via TripAdvisor.

Now, you have to read between the lines sometimes with these reviews. There’s always going to be some miserable sod that moans about everything. Or someone that sets their expectations too high, or complains for some reason that’s not relevant to yourself. But on reading these reviews, I was not convinced at all by the food offered at the hotels.

I did some more digging and tried a few more hotel websites. My favourites are Hotels.com, Venere.com, LastMinute.com, Expedia.com and LateRooms.com. You can usually get between 5 and 13 percent cashback from TopCashBack; Venere being one of the best recently.

Booking.com is also good but doesn’t tend to be on the cashback sites anymore, although you can sometimes found vouchers – another money saving tip; google ‘vouchers’ or ‘coupons’ for hotels (or any product you are planning to buy online) and you can often get a significant discount at the checkout.

Other popular sites are Expedia, ebookers, Hotels4U – most of which have cash-back offers on TopCashBack.

On one of my searches I forgot to tick the star rating.

A self catering hotel in Tossa De Mar, the GHT Tossa Apartments, showed up, at a reasonable price.

Why hadn’t I seen this one before?

Oh – because it’s a 2 star hotel.

But it looked nice… I read a little more.

It sounded ideal.

  • Nice town: check (I would definitely visit Tossa De Mar again; great restaurants, beach, castle etc)
  • Pool: check
  • Close to airport: check (35 min drive from Girona airport)
  • Close to beach: check (15 min walk, more or less flat)
  • Self catering: check
  • Balcony: check

Ok, so it’s only a 2 star hotel. What does that mean?

Often it means no pool, or no balcony, or a lack of facilities – for example, no ensuite bathroom.

This seemed to have everything. So perhaps it was tiny, or falling apart, or cockroach infested?

Nope.

According to the reviews, the vast majority of which were positive, it was a very good hotel, with a great pool and good facilities, and several people said they couldn’t understand why it wasn’t a 3 star. The main reason seemed to be the room cleaning service.

There wasn’t one.

Well, not as standard. If you stayed a week, the cleaners visited once – to replace the towels.

But not the bedding. Nor did they clean.

If you wanted the room cleaned, you had to pay extra.

Well… that’s fair enough. You don’t need new towels everyday, nor do you require the room cleaning so regularly. I was sure the bedding could last us one week. If we needed the service, we could pay for it; I can’t recall the cost exact now, but I do recall it being very reasonable.

I also find it quite annoying when the cleaners turn up and you’re still in your room, or when you come back from somewhere to find the cleaners half way through and you have to hang around.

So I could handle not having cleaners. Was that the only negative?

From the info I could find, yes.

I decided to book a week at the GHT Tossa Apartments.

And didn’t regret it! We had a great holiday. Ok, the room wasn’t huge – it was a studio rather than an apartment, so it was just two sofa beds – and a third could be pulled out from under one of them – but that was all we needed. There was a good size balcony with three chairs and a table and a nice pool view. The bathroom was nothing special but it was large enough with a decent bath, there was even a bidet. There was a brush and dustpan and mop and bucket so we were able to keep the room clean ourselves.

The room also had aircon!

I was expecting the kitchen facilities to be basic. They were; but better than some 3 or even 4 star self catering hotels I’ve stayed in. There was the usual basic two hob electric cooker; which took ages to warm up. Fair enough. But there was a full sized and well chilled fridge, a microwave, plenty of plates and cutlery including a chopping board and a juicer/squeezer. There was even a kettle in the cupboard!

There was no bottle opener, which was a shame, but I certainly hadn’t expected one.

The staff were friendly and helpful, the lifts worked, the place was clean and bright, the wi-fi connection was reasonable and at no extra charge, the pool was large and just about warm enough, and had a life guard on duty… perfect!

Ok, car parking was awful, I have to admit that. The whole of Tossa De Mar was just crammed with parked cars. The hotel did apparently offer car parking but I believe it was 15 Euro a day… no thanks. We spotted a car park down the road for 5 Euros a day. In the end we just drove around for 10 mins until we finally found somewhere; it was a good 20 mins walk back though! Still, can’t really blame the hotel for that.

So, my new money saving tip, which I hadn’t considered before: look at 2 star hotels too. You might just be pleasantly surprised.

Top money saving tip: Once you’ve found the ideal hotel to stay in, check it’s price on a few different websites; it can vary a lot. Even try the official hotel site – sometimes they have special offers. Don’t forget to check the cashback sites too such as TopCashBack or Quidco – you may find a hotel for £80 on one site but the more expensive site charging £85 is offering 15% cashback via TopCashBack, so it’s actually cheaper at just over £72.

Over time this can add up significantly – I’ve literally saved over a £1000 with TopCashBack over the years.

In my next post I will talk about airport car parking and other ways to save money on your holiday cost.

Travel

The art of cheap holidays: Part 1

Leave a comment

My work colleagues, friends and family often joke that I always seem to be on holiday. Do I ever do any work? they ask.

Yes I do. I just choose to take more frequent, short holidays, rather than one or two long ones.

Most people will take a couple of main holidays a year; maybe a two week break in summer and a one to two week break in spring or autumn. They’ll squeeze in a long weekend or two. Perhaps they’ll take off a few days around Christmas. Most UK employees have a holiday allowance of around 22-26 days a year, and won’t have any issues using these up.

These can often be very expensive holidays, especially where families are involved and holidays are taken during the school holiday period. Most people just shrug their shoulders at the expense and justify their 2 week holiday as being a ‘once a year treat’.

The same people ask me how I can afford to go away 10 times a year.

In my case, the holidays are usually only 4 or 5 days long; or just extended weekends. And they are carefully chosen, with much research and planning in advance.

Admittedly these holidays do often add up to more days off per year than the average family, maybe adding up to more like 30, 35 days, but I make the most of weekends and bank holidays. I also usually work on the days around Christmas & New Years (not on the actual holiday days though) as it’s usually quiet in the office, the traffic on the roads is reduced, and I don’t see the point wasting those days to sit around at home (as most do at that time of year) when I can save my holidays for a better time.

Cost wise my 35 odd days are probably similar too to the average holiday maker, if not less.

For a start, I tend to avoid package holidays, and look for cheap flights and find the accomodation and transfers separately. Yes, package holidays can sometimes be cheaper, but they are normally 7 or 14 day holidays, and somewhat restrictive on flight times/destinations. When you look for 4-5 day long holidays, there’s very little package options, and what you do find isn’t cheap.

Looking for individual flights means you can match your availability better and make the most of the time you have available. In my case, for many years I’ve worked as an IT Contractor. This has meant that days I don’t work – I don’t get paid. For example, say there’s a bank holiday Monday, on which I’m not expected to work. To not loose out on any days pay, I want to take the holiday Sat, Sun and Mon. Flights are more expensive on the Saturday and Bank Holiday though. I accept that I will loose one days pay, and find flights that fly locally approximately 2 hours after I finish work (and try and arrange to leave early that day) on the Friday, and that come back Tuesday evening or even early hours of Wednesday. Therefore I get a 4 day holiday and I’ve only had to have 1 unpaid day off work. If I’d chose a package holiday I would have struggled to find such specific time requirements and it would have cost me more through lost work days.

Another trick is to not even have a specific destination in mind. Be open to all travel possibilities!

The cheap airlines are the first place to start – Ryanair, Easyjet, Flybe, Jet2 and WizzAir. Open up their destination maps and see what they have to offer. Where do you want to fly from? If you are limited on time, consider local airports only. However, don’t just dimiss an airport because it’s not nearby; it’s worth checking if there’s a convenient train or bus. I for example generally avoid the London airports as they are a pain to get to from the Midlands, especially in terms of unpredicatable traffic – you don’t want to miss your flight! EMA is the closest for me from Nottingham, but Birmingham can be reached in around 45 minutes too. The train isn’t great though as you have to go into New Street first before going back out to the airport; neither is Luton great on the train as you don’t actually get a train to the airport, but Luton Parkway – you then have to wait for a shuttle  bus that takes 10-15 minutes to transfer you to the airport – and it runs every 10-15 minutes, which adds up the travel time. I can drive there in under 2 hours, although it’s not a fun slog down the roadwork strewn M1 to be honest.

If it’s a short weekend away, there’s no point travelling for hours to an airport; you’re loosing out on valuable holiday time. Similarly, check how far it is on the other side to your final destination. Malaga is one of my favourite destinations; you can easily get a train or a bus directly to Torremilinos/Benalmadena, or even a taxi for a not too extortionate price. Take care when flying to Tenerife – most resorts are on the south of the island so make sure you choose the right airport; the one of the north of the island is a considerable distance from those southern resorts!

I often get a hire car from the airport if I’m going away for more than 3 days; the cost of car rental for three plus days is often the same as or sometimes even less than taxi costs or transfers. Taxi prices from airports are always horrendous. If you don’t want to hire a car, check out the various transfer offers available. You can cut costs by having a shared transfer (usually in the form of a mini bus), but beware: there may be delays at the airport whilst waiting for other passengers to arrive, as well as delays in being delivered to your hotel due to an indirect route to drop off those other holiday makers.

Also check your hotel; they sometimes offer a free transfer service from the airport.

Going back to car hire, be particularly careful in Spain (other countries may also operate in a similar manner); lots of hire cars tend to have a ‘return empty’/’full-empty’ fuel policy. The idea is that they give you a car full of petrol – and you pay for this when you collect your car – and you return it empty. Note that this is charged at an inflated cost to cover their refilling ‘service’. The worst part is though that if you don’t use all the petrol in the tank – and no-one’s ever going to return it completely empty for risk of running out of fuel, and most people simply won’t use that much fuel anyway – then you’ve paid for all that fuel for nothing; there’s no refund. I got caught out once on a 5 day trip in the Canaries. I got stung with a charge of something like 76 Euros for a full tank of fuel on arrival (it probably would have cost closer to 60 Euros if I’d purchased it myself); and I had no intention of using it. I only used the car to drive from the airport to my hotel, and back again 5 days later – it was much more convenient than a transfer and cheaper than a taxi; at least I’d thought it was, but with the fuel charges, it wasn’t.

Now I look for ‘full-full’ policies; the idea being that you don’t pay for the fuel but make sure you return it full, therefore only paying for any fuel you’ve actually used – topping up just before returning. Most car hire companies offer this fuel policy when the car hire is for 3 days or less, just watch out if you want the car for longer. I recently hired a car with FireFly in Spain via Arguscarhire.com with a slightly different fuel policy; the car was supplied with a full tank of fuel which I paid for (which of course came with an inflated price), and when I returned the car they supposedly refunded any petrol left in the tank back to me – minus a service charge, of course.

They didn’t say what the charge is and I’ve only just returned so I’m still waiting to see what I’ll get back… However, this was one of the better deals at the time for a week long hire and there was also a great cashback offer via TopCashBack so I decided to risk it.

You might find some great prices for hire cars with the ‘full-empty’ fuel policy, but if you’re not planning to use all that fuel, then the initially more expensive seeming hire cars with the ‘full-full’ fuel policy might work out cheaper.

Returning to flights, it’s also worth checking SkyScanner (http://www.skyscanner.net)- especially if you have a specific flight destination or dates in mind. We have had a few short (4 day) breaks recently with tight deadlines to get out & return in, but with open minds as to where we wanted to go; so we entered the dates, chose all UK airports, any destination, ticked the ‘prefer directs’, and waited for the results. We then opened a new browser tab for each of the UK airports that were accessible for us, and then looked at the destinations. It took some time and narrowing down but we eventually found some perfect flights to Ibiza and had one of the most enjoyable breaks we have had for some time.

Don’t be afraid to fly out with one airline and back with another – why not? Just be careful of baggage policies; Ryanair allows a large bag onboard (and now a second small bag) but Wizzair only a allow a tiny bag onboard, so don’t get caught out!

Also, don’t restrict yourself to flying out from and back to the same airport – if it’s convenient or cheaper to return to a different airport, why not? Although if you are planning to travel by car to the airport don’t leave it at one airport and leave yourself stranded on the way home! Check transport options to see if it’s viable. There’s no point flying out from Plymouth and opting for the £30 cheaper flight home to Edinburgh when it’s going to cost you £100 in train fares (and not to mention time) to get home.

Alternate airports & airlines can be a good option though. For example, recently my girlfriend flew out to Krakow directly from East Midlands (having got there via a taxi) with Ryanair a day before me to sort out some business; I flew the next day after work from Luton (having drove there) to Katowice with Wizzair. She picked me up from the airport and drove me to Krakow (just over an hours drive) and we had a nice weekend there at a friend wedding, then had a friend drive us back to Katowice and we flew back to Luton and drove home together. The times and prices of these flights, not to mention the fact that I would have lost paid days work, were much better options than if we’d flown direct at the same time.

I also try to avoid school holidays to save on the price of holidays, but having a six year old daughter, it’s not always possible. I try and take her away for long weekends when I can and away in the UK during summer holidays, but did take her to Spain for a week this summer break. It wasn’t cheap, but I still managed to save a lot of money by looking around. I had a choice of several weeks, and was happy to go anywhere warm. More on this in my next post.

Yes it’s time consuming doing all this research and planning. But I enjoy it. It’s become almost a hobby. And as I’ve been doing it for so long now, I know where to look, and what I like.

In the next post I will advise on finding the perfect hotel.