Foreign Perspectives

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If you’re looking for a hotel in Orlando for your next vacation, why not consider a Orlando Vacation Home instead?

Going down the vacation home option doesn’t mean that you need to cook all your own meals as you can easily dine out in the many local restaurants. What it does mean is that you’ll have an awful lot more space to spread out in compared to a similarly priced hotel room.

Not only that, but if you go for a vacation home, you’ll generally also have your own private pool rather than fighting for space around the hotel pool.

As you can see, these places are usually quite luxurious which can’t always be said for the notionally comparable hotel room.

Popularity: 54% [?]

There are probably hundreds of websites out there offering to find you the cheapest flight from A to B but on the whole they give you the cheapest retail flight.

Now, you might think that you have to pay retail price for your ticket in that you’re not a travel agent but that’s not necessarily the case. CFares works on a similar basis to CostCo ie you become a member and thereby can avail of prices close to wholesale.

Ah, but then there’s the cost of membership to add to the ticket price, isn’t there? It depends: they offer Gold membership free which lets you book flights and see the price that you could get by upgrading to full (Platinum) membership.  In that Platinum membership costs $50/year and on some flights I checked the savings were around $30 so you’d only need to take a couple of short-haul flights each year to recoup the cost of the full membership.

Are the prices any good though? That depends on where you’re flying as naturally they’ll have better deals in some areas than others. In America, they’re about $50 cheaper than booking direct, in Europe they’re about $50 more expensive (both comparisons using the Platinum membership price).

So, for a cheap flight in America, they’re worth it although you will need to upgrade to Platinum membership to get the very best deals.

Popularity: 42% [?]

South Africa is one of those destinations where there’s just too much to talk about.

It’s fairly easy to get to and flights to South Africa are much more affordable than they were even just a few years ago. It is a long haul flight from Europe though so it’s never going to be as cheap to get to as mainland Europe has become.

Most people just consider it either as a city destination or for the wildlife but of course there’s much more to it than that. For one thing, the coastline is massive so you’ve a wide selection of pretty much unspoilt beaches. There’s even vineyards, of course, as you’ll know from the increasing numbers of South African wines that you see on the shelves these days.

The choice is so wide that it’s often said that South Africa is a world in one country.

Popularity: 48% [?]