Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Cheaper travel’ Category

When you run a booking service, you get a strange perspective of the holiday booking habits of people which is generally at odds with what you’d think people would really do.

For instance, our B&B sites pick up a lot of traffic from around April through to August each year and outside that they’ve relatively low numbers of visitors. That’s understandable really as most B&B bookings are for just a few days at a time at most and you wouldn’t expect people to book short term holidays a long time in advance.

It’s quite different for the self-catering sites though. For them the booking season started just before Christmas and we’re getting so much traffic on the sites at the moment that it looks like we’ll need to upgrade the bandwidth next week. In fact, the traffic is pretty much as high as it was in the peak of the summer season!

Normally speaking you need to book travel well in advance to get the bargain prices but that’s strictly true only for the very peak of the peak periods and outside that there are often unexpected bargains around if you know where and how to look.

What about the location? Well, if you’re not especially set on a particular destination then you can get really serious bargains. For instance, everyone who goes to Denmark goes to Copenhagen but what about Aarhus? It’s equally cute but often a lot cheaper than it’s more famous neighbour. For that matter, what about a city break not to the “Ryanair city” but to the city that the plane actually lands in? For instance, their “Barcelona” is actually Girona. Not as famous nor as large as Barcelona but there’s still enough to satisfy a short citybreak.

Flights prices are the most volatile and therefore they need the most work to really save money. Thinking of a weekend break? Well, lots of people do so the thing to do to save money is to book what they’re not. On a typical route, people will be flying a little more in one direction on some days than in others. Weekend breaks to Paris are very popular for instance therefore the flight prices on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings from London to Paris are high as they are coming back from Paris on the Sunday evening. The key here is to book a trip that’s less popular such as a week in Paris but starting on Sunday evening and finishing on Friday night ie the opposite of what most people do.

Hotels are easier to deal with in most cases as hotel reservation systems aren’t nearly so sophisticated as those of the airlines. This means that the prices are, in general, more stable and there’s a lot less load management going on behind the scenes. However, that doesn’t mean that there’s no load management going on, just that it’s less visible. So, you may be able to get a lower price by booking via one of the last minute booking sites (no, not LastMinute.com: in spite of the name, they’re not really geared up to truly last minute travel). Likewise doing what other people aren’t is a sure way to save money so in city break destinations, stay a little further out and you’ll find the prices a lot lower.

Insurance? Most people buy whatever policy the airline or travel agent is selling. This generates a lot of commission but rarely gets you a good deal. Much better instead to get an annual policy so you’re all set for those unplanned short breaks.

Anyway, give a bit of thought to your next short notice break and you may find that it can be had a whole lot cheaper than you expected.

My parents are missing James and John so we’re thinking of taking a short trip over to coincide with my Dad’s birthday next week.

Ordinarly, such a short time before booking the flights would mean crazy prices but, of course, we’re in the lull before Christmas and in fact the return tickets are a very reasonable £50 each including taxes for a flight from Barcelona direct to Belfast.

The snag is that James is now at school so we’ll have to have a think about that as Santa’s coming to the school sometime fairly soon and they’re in the midst of preparations for the film that they’re producing of the kids.

Not so long ago there were all kinds of restrictions on transferring money abroad due to currency controls that lots of countries had in place. They’re almost all gone now and it has become more of a natural thing for “ordinary people” to need to transfer money abroad.

Most of the time it’s due to holidays, of course, but an increasing number of us are becoming small scale international jet setters with homes in more than one country and with both of those come a need to transfer money abroad.

Holidays usually involve a different category of currency conversion in that you are on the spot when you need the money, the amounts involved are smaller and you probably don’t have a local bank account. However, whilst the amounts may be smaller individually, added up over the years they will come to quite a hefty sum. Also, many of those who holiday in the same country each year may be considering the purchase of a property there and so have that local account too.

Most people ignore the costs of all those international transactions to their detriment. One friend of mine found that almost 10% of his entire salary was going in such bank charges simply because he was living abroad and using his “home” account in exactly the same way that he always had ie lifting small amounts frequently.

Saving money on those transactions is usually fairly easy. If you don’t want to change your bank, check out exactly how they charge for use of credit, debit and cash cards abroad. You will usually find that debit and cash cards are more economic ways of getting cash than credit cards are in that you won’t be paying interest on the money. However, that’s not to say that they are cheap. Typically a withdrawal of £100 in the local currency will cost you £4 to £5 but note that this includes a fixed transaction charge so withdrawing £20 will cost you around £2 ie 10% whereas £200 would be about £7 ie 3.5%. You can eliminate these charges altogether if you use the UKs Nationwide Flexaccount as it has neither transaction fees nor foreign exchange charges.

It’s slightly better if you buy things, usually. Using a typical Mastercard or Visa card will only incur the foreign exchange charge ie buying £100 of goods will cost you £2.75 and that £20 item would be 70p. Therefore you should buy things with the card directly rather than lifting the cash to pay for them.

What about larger amounts ie if you’re living abroad or have a holiday home abroad? Well, if you follow our advice and get the Nationwide Flexaccount you can lift £500 per day which means that it’s quite viable to use that card in conjunction with a local bank account to transfer amounts equivalent to several thousand pounds. You certainly couldn’t buy a house in that way but it’s enough to fund the payments for electicity bills and the like.

If you are talking thousands, then the usual way is to ask your bank to do a SWIFT transfer. This will cost around £25 plus there’s a currency exchange charge (which isn’t widely available). However, that too can be eliminated in some circumstances. For example, if you bank with HSBC then you can do free transfers to an HSBC account elsewhere in the world but the HSBC Premier account that you need to avail of this costs £20/month (unless you have £50,000 or more on deposit with them) so it’s not as useful as it first appears. However, if you are buying in Spain, the Halifax run to a free account which offers free transfers from Halifax UK accounts to Halifax Spain ones. What’s less obvious is that this route gives you a pretty much free way from pounds sterling to euros anywhere in Europe as banks are required to transfer euros at the same level of charges in other European countries as they do domestically ie to get euros in an account in France, you could transfer from the Halifax UK to Halifax Spain and from there to a French bank.

Other options include the use of the specialised money transfer services such as HiFX (there are lots of similar services around.

After spending all that time looking around, we think it’s going to be a whole lot simpler and cheaper to go somewhere by car.

So, we’re restarting our search for a holiday destination yet again.

We don’t want to drive for days on end from here which limits us to a range of around six hours driving time or thereabouts. Thanks to the previous searching, we’ve ruled out the original northern locations and are instead looking south which simplifies the search process considerably.

All being well, we’re hoping to actually book somewhere today although we were also hoping to book somewhere last week too so you never know.