Of course the ticketing aspect is just one of the components of your vacation cost and you should look into lowering the cost in all areas this year. After all, with the economy in the state that it’s in globally, chances are that there are some serious bargains to be had in all areas that you look at.

It’s simple to get a bargain then? In some ways it should be given the relatively low level of booking that seems likely to prevail this year. That said, do bear in mind that many tour operators will be seeking to keep their prices up which means that they may cut capacity. Thus whilst finding cheap hotels may be relatively easy (it’s hard to reduce capacity short-term for hotels), actually getting there might prove more difficult if the number of flights and range of destinations have been cut back by the operators.

Ordinarily, the best approach to getting a good overall price is to get the accommodation nailed down first and then sort out the transport, this is a year when it could pay to get the transport sorted out very early and worry about the accommodation a little later. The reasoning behind that is that it’s quite easy for the airlines to cut capacity and  bump up the prices that way, accommodation providers have a largely fixed allocation of rooms and therefore are more likely to cut prices to fill them later on if need-be. That said, do bear in mind that when airlines cut capacity this can in some cases mean that flights from A to B are cancelled altogether so this approach is best applied when you’re looking at a destination served by a number of airlines.

As far as local car hire at your destination goes, it’s not nearly so easy to work out a pricing strategy in most cases. This is because the number of cars at a given destination isn’t entirely fixed in the way that accommodation at that destination is, but neither is it so easy to change the number of vehicles available in the way that airlines can adjust capacity either. The one exception to this is with relatively small islands where generally the pool of available cars is fixed for the season (book early if this applies to you this year as supply does run out on the smaller islands).

It’s too early to say for definite whether this will be a year of very low holiday prices but the shape of the economy seems to suggest that it will be.

Related posts:

1. Gaps in the summer reservations
2. It’s August, so nothing non-essential gets done
3. What about a holiday in South Africa?
4. New holiday, new luggage?
5. The expenses of being a “noshow”

What’s a “meta search engine” anyway? Well, rather than search each of the sites directly yourself what a “meta search engine” does is to search the results of other search engines. The theory is that this way you’ll get the best possible results.

In the case of TravelGrove it’s not quite a fully-fledged meta search engine as yet in that it submits the relevant searches to the other travel provider sites and opens up the relevant page on their site. Although this isn’t a full meta-search facility, it does save you a lot of time in re-entering the information. Do watch for the popups though; I found that sometimes the site just sat there seemingly doing nothing whereas in fact what was happening was that the popups it was generating were getting blocked.

As always with these things, the discount airlines aren’t searched so if you’re going from an airport mainly served by the discounters you may not pick up the best price. Having said that, these days the “discounters” are sometimes more expensive than regular airlines so you’re not necessarily losing anything.

In addition to the usual flight, car hire and hotels they’ve added cruises. To be honest the cruise search seems pretty basic at first sight. However, don’t let that put you off because it comes up with some excellent prices and the limited search options may well throw up a fantastic cruise that you might not otherwise have throught of.

There’s also the seemingly obligatory community section which offers you the option of running up a travel journal along with a map of the spots you’ve been to. This site is new so don’t expect an awful lot of entries here yet. Those that are have the usual range from dreadful to quite useful.

Finally, there’s a surprisingly complete travel guide section. At the moment most of the detail is around the US and Mexico which has some surprisingly detailed entries on eg Monterrey. There is information on places outside these areas but it’s currently mainly confined to country guides rather than specific resorts in, say, France. Having said that, the detail in the US guides sets a good precedent and over time hopefully they’ll roll out a similar level of detail elsewhere.

Overall, it’s a nice site which might save you some money and which has plenty of information to help you plan your vacation.

Related posts:

1. In the eye of the beholder: it is a listing service or a free website service?
2. Just what do you really need to take on holiday?
3. Just who is “the media” these days? Legally it DOES include bloggers or at least those based in the UK
4. Breaking up the long distance trips
5. The expenses of being a “noshow”

If you simply don’t turn up almost all hotels will charge you for the first night of your stay but some resort style hotels will charge you for the entire stay. In both cases this is a non-refundable charge.

However, you don’t necessarily need to pay it. In most cases, if you call the hotel a day in advance of your stay you’ll generally not have to pay anything further. Even cancelling the same day can sometimes save you money. For example, although we can charge for a noshow unless the reservation is cancelled a day in advance, in reality we waive this if we can get someone else for the room following the cancellation. Incidentally, it’s really not necessary for you to make up some excuse to explain your cancellation: hotels have heard them all before and it’ll make no difference as to whether or not they charge you.

Do watch any deposit payments that you’ve made though as in many instances these are kept by the reservation system that you used and are usually not refundable. If you find a hotel listed on a reservation system it’s usually worthwhile to contact them directly as this will save you the booking fee and you may get a discount too.

You might think that these “noshow” charges are just profiteering on the part of the hotel. They aren’t. Whenever you make a guaranteed reservation online the hotel is obliged to keep the room for you even if other people turn up asking for a room. In some cases we have turned away as many as a dozen couples looking for a room because our last room was subject to a guaranteed reservation only to find out that the people who’d booked it never turned up.

And a final plea… read the description of the hotel and particularly its location. Hotels are usually listed by “resort” which means that all hotels within about 25 miles of a city will come up as being attached to that city. This means that hotels well into the country are listed as associated with cities. Cancelling because you discover that a hotel you expected to be in the city centre is actually in the country doesn’t save a “noshow” charge if you only discover that when you arrive in the city.

Related posts:

1. Assumptions that people make which aren’t quite right for their holiday accommodation
2. In search of the ideal hotel for a short-break to London
3. Started planning your Hogmanay trip to Edinburgh yet?
4. Have you thought of Argentina for your holidays?
5. North Carolina vacation rental homes

Whilst you can obviously leave many things to the last minute that can cost you dear. Just consider what seems on first thought to be a simple matter of parking the car. Last time I tried that in our local airport the price ranged from £2.50 a day with no additional charges through to £10 a day with charges for the airport shuttle.

That was at a small local airport and it’s a lot more complex when you’re looking for gatwick parking as the people over at Essential Travel reveal on their website. I knew that Gatwick was quite a large airport facility but I’d never have dreamt of it having as many as 17 car parks and, of course, they all come with different rates and offers. Even stingy ole me wouldn’t dream of pricing around that many car parks so it’s just as well that their site does that hard work for you as there’s quite a bit of money to be saved if you get the right car parking for your holiday.

Related posts:

1. Picking your ideal RV vacation base
2. Where’s the ideal spot for a motorhome vacation?
3. Where’s the best university to do a part-time degree these days?
4. How complete should a holiday destination be?
5. We’ve finally gotten going on the gym

Our closest airport is all of 20 minutes away so is definitely our preferred departure point but it’s one that we just can’t seem to manage for a flight to Belfast next week. Flights go to the Birmingham, Stansted and Brussels but all arrive just after the last flight to Belfast from those airports would have just departed.

Next choice is Gerona which has a massive range of departures. However, that’s about 90 minutes drive from us so in practical terms departures before 10am aren’t really that viable and unfortunately the flights out leave more like 6am which would mean a 2am departure from home for us ie not really a runner.

Final choice seems to be Barcelona which has the big plus point that it’s a direct non-stop flight but the downer that it’s about two and a half hours drive to get there. Having said that, the even departure time is close to perfect.

Related posts:

1. Catching a last minute bargain
2. Gee what a tiring trip…
3. Breaking up the long distance trips
4. Boy does travelling take it out of you!

When you’re heading to a long-weekend destination then typically most people will leave home on Friday and return on Sunday or Monday. If you leave home on Monday and return on Friday then you’ll get substantial savings on the flight prices, sometimes sufficiently large savings to let you stay most of the week for the cost that everyone else is paying for a weekend.

Likewise, when you’re looking for a las vegas hotel then make sure that you’re not going during a conference week.

Using tactics like this you can really stretch your vacation money which is what most of us need to do in these difficult times.

Related posts:

1. Fitting work into your life
2. Are any of the building societies a safe place to leave your money these days?
3. Boy does travelling take it out of you!
4. North Carolina vacation rental homes

I was surprised to find that there’s quite a selection of fairly reasonably priced appartment accommodation right in the city itself. Last time I looked everything was at crazy prices as you would expect for such a popular and compact city. Getting to the accommodation sounds like something of a trek though. We’re flying Ryanair so “Venice airport” is actually Treviso which is about 30km outside the city (vs 10km for Marco Polo, the main Venecian airport) and involves a coach trip (EUR 9 each, each way) as Treviso isn’t well connected to Venice. Still, once we get off the coach we’re pretty much in Venice and it’s quite a nice boat trip round to the dock nearest our accommodation.

Water transport in Venice is quite expensive although to be fair if you’re based right in the city as we will be you don’t really need to use it that much. Sure, we’ll go on the round-the-island trip but other than that and probably a trip to Lido we’ll likely only be heading out on the water to see the glass making at Murano so don’t expect to spend too much on getting around (it’s quite a walkable size of city).

Related posts:

1. Assumptions that people make which aren’t quite right for their holiday accommodation
2. New Zealand’s charms
3. The expenses of being a “noshow”
4. Breaking up the long distance trips
5. Cleaning up your drinking water

Up until quite recently, it’s been tied directly the sale of the holiday itself and in many cases people still think of it that way. However, the tying of travel insurance to the holiday by the travel agents has been illegal for a number of years now and you’re free to get your travel insurance where-ever you wish to these days. Almost always, that will mean somewhere other than the travel agent as the insurance on offer from them is rarely good value.

Things to consider when you’re shopping around are:

1. your own health: if you’ve anything that could be considered a “pre-existing condition” then you need to be upfront with that to the insurance company or you could find that if you need treatment whilst on holiday, they won’t cover it;
2. what your house insurance covers: some of your more expensive items might already be covered for worldwide travel (typically this would be the likes of jewellry);
3. where you’re going: if it’s within Europe it’s going to be a lot cheaper than if you include America as healthcare in the US is seriously expensive;
4. the length of time you’re going: many policies limit you to 30 days max, others to 90 and if you’re going longer you may need to look at gap-year policies; and
5. how often you go on holiday: if it’s more than once a year then you should consider annual policies which cover you for multiple holidays over the course of a year.

Once you’ve all that sorted, it’s a matter of looking at one of the comparison sites such as money.co.uk and finding the best deal.

Related posts:

1. Just what do you really need to take on holiday?
2. Pricing around for the car insurance
3. Getting your insurance tidied up
4. Insuring your motorhome

So, for example, if you’re looking for cheap flights to Dublin then you’ll find loads of options here. What you’ll not find though is those of Ryanair basically because they forbid other sites to use their flight information. However, that’s not a great loss as their flights are often more expensive these days by the time you add on all their compulsory little extras and, of course, the service is absolutely dreadful. They’ve a neat little guide to the transport options to/from the airport that you’ve chosen which could save you a lot of messing about when you get there.

What you’ll also find is the confusingly titled link to youth hostels. In fact, there are far more hotels listed than youth hostels these days on the site that provides this listing service for BootsnAll. For example, if you look at Perpignan you’ll find that the four properties coming up are all hotels and the Perpignan youth hostel isn’t listed. Make sure you read the small print as to where the “hostel” is located as they’re listed by major town and in some cases the hostel is well outside the town.

Their forum is a great place to ask the dopey (or sensible) questions that we all have when heading off for somewhere exotic for the first time. It’s very much targeted at the type of place that independent travellers go ie it’s mainly the relatively offbeat places that get the best coverage. This isn’t the place to ask a question about travelling in Europe but rather a place to ask about climbing Kilimanjaro.

Finally, they have an online store where you’ll find a lot of the harder to find items that you might need if you’re heading off somewhere exotic. Before you get carried away with buying loads of neat gadgets from here, I’d be inclined to pop a question on the forum to find out what kind of stuff you really need if you’re heading off to some unfamiliar spot. Much as I’m sure the stuff listed is excellent, you really don’t want to be burdened down with things you don’t need when setting off.

Overall, it’s a good website covering a lot of the things that you’d need to have available if you were heading off on a big trip.

Related posts:

1. Assumptions that people make which aren’t quite right for their holiday accommodation
2. The expenses of being a “noshow”
3. The McDonalds approach to blogging
4. Why not try a vacation rental instead of a hotel for your next holiday?
5. Breaking up the long distance trips

The reason is simple really: everyone’s going on holiday right now. Not only that but this year is particularly problematic in that the discount airfares have increased quite substantially in price so everyone is making more of an effort to save money in other ways and, for most people, car hire is one of the easiest things to target as it generally makes up a substantial chunk of your spending on a holiday.

Of course, the problem is that as so many people are thinking along the same lines, the very cheapest car hire deals get taken out very quickly indeed so the usual tactic of going for the very cheapest doesn’t work at the moment. However, all is not lost as finally there’s a site offering car hire price comparisons which takes out an awful lot of the donkey work in finding the best deal.

Usually I’d be quite wary of this type of site in that it’s obviously making money on the commission that the car hire companies pay out and in fact in my first test of it I was going to say “AVOID” in that it came back with car hire prices £10 higher than those I’d gotten direct. However, click-through to the various offers and you get the same price as you’d get direct so the only downside is that you’d need to click-through to the first couple of offers to get the real price (in my case the third listed was a good deal cheaper than the first two).

Related posts:

1. Parking at Gatwick
2. Managing the reservations
3. Checking out holiday prices via the TravelGrove meta-search engine
4. Is your weight there because you just eat too much?
5. Wouldn’t you like to be able to work just sitting on the beach?