Booking a holiday is up there with cars and houses when it comes to choosing the one that's right for you at a price that suits. With the recession taking hold many of us have found it necessary to tighten our belts and many are looking forward to their one main summer holiday of the year and do not want to take any risks. After some major Tour Operator failures during 2008 its understandable that the British general public have to exercise a degree of caution before handing their money over. Having had the benefit of over 20 years in the Package Holiday business I will would like to share some tips to enable you to book the perfect holiday this summer....
1. Before you start enquiring about your holiday ensure that the company(s) you are dealing with have either an ABTA (Association or British Travel agents) or ATOL license (Air Travel Organisers License) Without going into to much detail both of these Licenses cover you should the Tour operator go into liquidation or cease trading. Should you be on Holiday at the time your flights home and the hotelier will be guaranteed by ATOL.
2. Best time to book? The days of the last minute deals are over. Due to consolidation in the UK leisure travel industry there are a lot less tour operators than a few years ago. The 2 main players are Thomson / First choice Holidays & Thomas Cook Holidays over the past 4 years they have brought a lot of the smaller specialist tour operators, therefore in a cost cutting measure they have cut capacity drastically so this has a knock on effect on late availability as they now try to entice people to book in advance with early booking discounts and free addons like extra legroom, inflight meals etc. On the whole passengers who booked outside of 12 weeks prior to departure saved an average of 15% opposed to those who booked within 7days. Another advantage of booking as early is that in most cases you can pay a low deposit with the balance required up to 8 weeks prior to departure. So you don't have to part with huge chucks of your hard earned money in one go.
3. Do your research! There are many hotel review sites like tripadvisor.com. These give you an insight in to the quality of the hotel. Beware, take all reviews with a pinch of salt as in some cases hotels have been known to write bad reviews about other hotels in the resort. Also over 90% of holidaymakers do not write about positive experiences so you do tend to get a lot of negative reviews on some very good hotels. Try calling a holiday specialist who can offer you impartial advice about a given hotel. For good quality price comparisons check teletextholidays & travel supermarket they have 1000's of offers from 100's of Tour Operators and Travel Agents.
4. Booking your Cheap holiday. Most travel agents will charge you around 2% for using a credit card most charge nothing for using a debit. Once you are happy with your chosen holiday Always was ask the company if they can throw in Free Insurance or Transfers as a lot of them will if you are ready to do a booking immediately. Once you have the Holiday within your budget book it straight away, good deals do not hang around. Another important factor with regards to price, is don't call to many companies for the same holiday as you might end up increasing the price of your holiday. A lot of major tour operators and low cost flight companies will increase the price on a given holiday once it starts to get many "hits" for the same date and hotel. So its best to do research and narrow down to about 3 companies to get a general idea of cost.
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