Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

One of the hassles in the hotel trade is that people seem to be booking their holidays later every year so it’s really hard to plan.

For example, a week ago we had hardly anyone booked for the coming week yet now we’re virtually full. Not only that but several of the bookings which are filling us up aren’t the overnight stays that you normally expect from late bookings but quite chunky ones of three days to a week.

Now obviously we don’t want to be running out of stuff but on the other hand we don’t want to have massive stocks of perishables that we’d end up throwing out. Therefore, we find ourselves needing to do a spot of restocking tomorrow (it’s a public holiday today so that’s out).

The other problem that exists locally is that many hotels close very promptly for the year in just a few weeks or so. That’s handy for us since we stay open but I suspect that there’s a lot of last minute attempted booking going on that just ain’t happening because the hotels being sought are closed (although, funnily enough, not all are closed on the reservation systems, so beware!).

As I’m sure you noticed, all kinds of shops were stacked high with various satellite navigation units last year now that the prices have fallen into the “impulse buy” area.

The impact of that is now being felt locally in a big way in terms of the sheer number of cars going along roads that were never intended for the level of traffic that they get now. What’s also apparent is that the effect of so many people using GPS on their holidays is changing the places where they are staying.

Interestingly, in our area the effect seems to have been to send people along the old highways rather than the new ones. Since the construction of the new motorways, the majority of traffic has gone along them but now people appear to be returning to the old routes and finding that many of the hotels that formerly lived on the passing trade have long since closed down.

We’re at the very end of one of those old routes ourselves and are finding that each morning is starting with a series of panic phonecalls from various hotel owners further along the route looking for accommodation for their departing guests (or, in some cases, overflow from double bookings). For example, this morning we’d several separate calls from different hotels in a town about 45 minutes drive from us. Along that route you’ll pass around half a dozen hotels that have closed down over the years since the motorway was built which gives some idea of the traffic that this road used to have. Unfortunately, with the construction of the motorway, development of our road stopped and therefore it’s not really up to the volume of traffic that it’s starting to get (ie missing passing places and so on).

As part of the planning for the extra traffic that’s been building up (largely courtesy of GPS I suspect), they’re building a bypass for the village just beside us. However, I wonder if it would be a lot more economic to pay TomTom et al to remove the village from the routes it plans? Certainly, it’s never going to be economic to build a bypass for all the little villages that are going to be affected by GPS routing.

Whilst we’re in the midst of the peak of the holiday season at the moment, as usual we’re also in the peak season for noshows and cancellations.

The cancellations are understandable. It’s very difficult to get booked in locally at the moment so people grab the first place they see even if it isn’t in the location they really want to be. Then they’ll cancel later if they get something closer to their ideal spot. For instance, earlier today out of the 66 hotels within 30km of Perpignan, just 2 had rooms available and we know that one of those only had rooms available because of cancellations earlier in the day (‘cos one of them is us). If we were braver, we’d delibrerately overbook the rooms as the larger hotels do to allow for the expected high level of cancellations.

However, the noshows are usually puzzling. Just last night we received an e-mail from a group that look like they’ll not be arriving now to confirm that they were coming and that they were looking forward to seeing the area. If they’d cancelled yesterday, it would have cost them nothing, now it’s going to cost them getting on for EUR 150 and we’re sitting with several empty rooms.

People have a whole range of different ways that they approach booking their holiday of course and this year I think we’ve run through all of them!

There are those who book everything months in advance and don’t allow for any changes in their plans. They certainly get more choice in their accommodation and transport options doing this and sometimes they even get better prices (almost always on discount flights of course). However, the downside is that some of those offers can work out quite expensive if you change your plans eg if you’ve booked a non-refundable rate to get a discount and your plans change. We’ve just had a family whose plans changed and that early booking cost them dear as they’d to make last minute changes of their flights (always expensive) and look certain to have lost hundreds of euros on the accommodation too.

Then there are those that get the urge to go on holiday and book things piecemeal not too much in advance of their trip. This can be quite expensive as the flights are almost always more expensive than the first groups prices. Sometimes the accommodation is more expensive too as hotels are increasingly following the discount airline pricing model ie last minute rooms are more expensive than those you book well in advance. The biggest problem though is that many of these people end up booking across holiday periods when availability of accommodation and transport is less than ideal. For example, we have a couple now who couldn’t book a straight week with us as a couple of days crossed a major holiday so they booked somewhere else to fill the gap. Neither did they book a car in advance as, because of that holiday, there wasn’t any online availability so they’re at the airport at the moment trying to get a car.

Finally, there is the last minute group. Well, actually two groups. One tries to book about a week in advance and that’s usually fine except at the peak of the peak season but sometimes it isn’t. However, at the peak of the peak there’s also a peak of last minute cancellations so if you call a week in advance and find nothing available, calling a day or two in advance can often find some rooms available.

Cash cards are much more limited in function than credit and debit cards but they have one really big advantage abroad: without the PIN, they’re useless and therefore they’re of much less interest to thieves.

Cash cards for international use come in only two versions which are Cirrus and Plus. Both are linked to your bank account although you can also get prepaid versions of both.

These cards can’t be used in shops to make purchases and are limited to withdrawing cash from ATMs. Some banks put these symbols on their cards without considering that it means the cards can be used overseas so the charging for overseas transactions is sometimes less than clear. Once or twice I’ve found banks who were so sure that their card couldn’t be used abroad that they had no provision for making additional charges in their terms and conditions (and didn’t in my case, but don’t rely on that).

Although it’s not always clear, you can use Cirrus cards in all Mastercard branded ATMs and Plus cards in all Visa branded ones. You need to check that the country you’re going to has ATMs (not all do!) as these cards can’t be used over the counter in banks. Also, check that it will be practical to use them eg in India I found that ATMs were not widely available and Rarotonga didn’t have any ATMs until quite recently.

Charges on these are made up of a transaction charge of around 2% with a minimum of £2/$2 plus a foreign currency conversion fee of around 3%. It’s therefore best to make withdrawals of £100/$100 at a time to minimise these charges.

Downsides are basically those charges and the fact that you can only use these cards in an ATM. For those living in the UK, a Nationwide cash card eliminates all charges and if you’re in the American military a USAA card works in much the same way. If your bank is a member of the Global Alliance (Bank of America, Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays, BNP, Deutschebank and Westpac) then you can withdraw cash from one of the other member banks ATMs without the transaction charge (you still get charged the foreign exchange fee).

I’m going to work my way through the various ways you can take money abroad over the next week or two in the travel money series. I’ve already covered cash, travellers cheques, credit cards/charge cards and debit cards and will be covering prepaid cards in the next episode.