Lockeys on Holiday have been made aware of some cracking bargains available on booking.com over the Easter holidays.
Grab an extra 15% off through our affiliate link shown above and enjoy a trip to the capital. Catch a show in the West End, pop and see The Queen, there's so much to do in London so don't miss out on this great offer.
5. Accomodation
Where to start? The choice of hotels, apartments, rentals available through holiday booking sites can be really daunting. Here's a few tips to help narrow things down. Do you plan to stay in one place or are you travelling around? One place is easy, you want the biggest, best, most lavish villa or apartment you can afford for the cheapest price possible. We have tried most of the main sites, Owners Direct, Home Away and even Air BnB. To get the best results, narrow down your searches by location and facilities as much as you can. This said our best villa holidays have always been booked independently and directly with villa owners, maybe we've been lucky! Always, always, always look for well reviewed places and if possible contact a couple of random reviewers for some feedback.
Travelling around to several locations has always been our preferred option and these days couldn't be easier to organise.
With booking.com, hotels.com, Expedia, Trip Advisor and Agoda all offering a one stop shop for hotels, apartments, hostels and rentals the options are limitless. Again it's important to refine your search to rule out the multitude of unsuitable properties. A good rule of thumb is to use the following parameters- a. Location (where do you want to stay) b. Budget (set the budget to a maximum slightly higher than your desired average accommodation spend) c. rooms/occupancy/bed configuration d. Amenities (we usually want A/C and a pool is often nice) e. Ratings (ignore at your peril! Though a few bad reviews isn't the end of the world, some travellers are soooooo fussy). While all of the mentioned sites offer the ability to refine your search, we've found booking.com suits us the best as we can select bed configurations, amenities etc to match our needs. This is why we've joined their affiliate program, where we place ads on our pages in return for a small commission. Our readers get a great price and we are paid a very small % of the commission earned by the company. It doesn't make us rich, in fact it doesn't even cover our website expenses but it does guarantee our readers are getting a great deal.
6. What do you want to see?
In every place we visit on a trip we try to make a list of things we really want to see or do. Of course Trip Advisor proves invaluable for the new places we visit. But in reality for most people, you've chosen a destination based upon what is there, so you have some ideas already. What we find is important, especially when travelling with children, is to not overdo it. Make sure there are plenty of opportunities to relax and chill out for a day, plan in beach trips, pool days in between the 'big' trips. If we are travelling around, or even visiting a destination for a specific sight, we usually book at least 3 nights accommodation so we get to see what we've come for at our own pace, as well as usually discovering something we didn't expect by having time to explore a little. It's tempting to get all the big trips out of the way early on into a trip. Don't be too tempted to do this! Once all the 'exciting' things are done you can leave yourself a little burned out, or sometimes we've not really appreciated what we've seen because we've been too frazzled by the whizzing around cramming in all the sights. It's much better to pace yourself, make sure there's something to look forward to towards the end of your trip. Again it's super important to give yourself time in a destination. Meet the locals, walk the town/village/city streets, find the amazing café/restaurant/shop you've never heard of. Get a flavour for a place and you will no doubt find a hidden gem or pick up a vital piece of information from a local that will enhance your visit. We've saved £££'s and discovered loads of useful tips.
6. How will you get around?
When taking a longer trip where you might visit several destinations it's important to plan your itinerary carefully. Make sure you allow yourself travel days and don't plan to do a lot when you first arrive. There's nothing worse than a grouchy teenager, or exhausted child being dragged around another temple. They get nothing from the experience and you miss out. One crucial thing we've learned is that travel plans often need to be flexible. Buses/planes/trains get cancelled, roads get closed, weather can ruin the best made plans. Before you even reach your destination you need to know the how, where, when of getting to all of your different destinations. Booking flights in advance offers security and in most cases a hefty discount on last minute prices. While flying the longer journeys (Bangkok to Chiang Mai) saves time and is economical, don't rule out other options. We've taken sleeper trains, a great way to save money, your travel costs and hotel costs are combined and you are saving some money while having a new and fun experience! Buses are often the cheapest form of travel, but can be long tiring journeys. Hiring a private driver is another option, though often a little more expensive it does provide you with the flexibility of leaving when you choose and stopping when you want. Often these private drivers have really nice mini vans - we've seen this first hand in Sri Lanka, Mexico, Thailand and Ecuador so imagine it's a well established method of travel world wide. Car Hire can be a daunting prospect in some destinations. We've found it cheap and handy in Europe but wouldn't dream of it in some SE Asian cities. This year we plan to have our own hire car throughout the Costa Rican trip, though it's very expensive there it does seem the best fit for our needs this time around. FINALLY We really want to help and support other families getting out travelling the world. Feel free to contact us using the comments option at any time. We do place some adverts on the blog, we do this for 2 reasons, 1 - we get a small commission for placing these ads which support our costs running the website (we aren't getting rich trust me), 2 - we only place adverts in the blog for companies we have used, trust and will help get you the best prices. Some ads down the side are linked to your own browsing history. Please click on adverts and help to support us. Keep travelling and keep exploring. 1. Know when you can travel Flexibility is obviously an important thing to bear in mind. The more rigid your travel dates the trickier it is to find the best and cheapest flights. Try not to tie yourself down to exact departure dates if you want the best prices. Sometimes just altering your search by a few days can bag a real bargain. As an example, this summer we were looking to travel to Costa Rica in August. Skyscanner showed the cheapest departure date as the 7th August, however to get around 3 weeks away the return flights were bringing the total to £850 per person. By juggling our departure dates and trying a few days earlier we found the perfect flights with the same Airline for only £600 per person. 2. Know where you want to go! It may sound silly but knowing where you want to go is essential when researching any trip. We always have an impromptu family 'meeting' and outline what everyone wants from our family holidays. This year the boys wanted to avoid another trip to Asia. So after a little discussion we set our sights on the Americas. We were flexible in out ultimate destination, knowing that flight availability and cost would ultimately determine our final choice. Though we did have a shortlist of several possibilities. 3. Set your budget Unfortunately in life we can't always have what we want. To avoid any false hopes and wasted planning time it is imperative to set your budget early. Have a pretty firm idea of these three areas - flights, accommodation and spending money. How you allocate funds to each of these areas really depends upon your destination. In Europe where low cost airlines make travel so cheap it is easy to keep flight costs to between 10-25% of the total holiday cost. Longer haul these costs grow to between 30-50% depending on destination. By finding the cheapest flights possible though you do allow yourself more freedom when booking accommodation and planning activities. We aim to average £50-60 per night on our travels if research shows it's possible. For example in Thailand this was easy to do without any compromise, sometimes we went for the £20 a night family room with basic facilities then followed it up with a splurge in a £100 a night beachfront place. What was important was I knew how much I had to spend and planned accordingly. This year in Costa Rica I've had to up the budget as accommodation is more expensive though we've gone a little higher than previous years by aiming to average £70 per night we've pretty much stuck to budget. 4. Booking your flights As mentioned previously, FLEXIBILITY is the key to getting what you want. We all have constraints on our travels, money, holiday entitlement, school term dates, seasonal variations in weather, however being as open to the full range of options will help you get what you want at the price you can afford. Bearing this in mind we can caution against being too flexible. On our Sri Lanka trip we compromised on our flights out, accepting a 17 hour layover in Oman as worthy of return flights for £440 each. Was it worth it? For us no. We learned from our experience and have never repeated such a lengthy lay over. Our outward journey ended up as 37 hours door to door and took us 2-3 days to recover. Skyscanner has been our saviour every long haul journey we have made. Other flight search engines such as Google flights, Momondo and Expedia are useful but so far we have never beaten Skyscanner for prices on flights we've identified an interest in. As explained earlier be flexible in the dates you select to fly, and even when you identify the cheapest departure be aware that the total flight cost might be cheaper by selecting a more expensive departure. Mix and match, try lots of different combinations. Also don't tie yourself to one departure airport. Scottish airports are cheaper from mid August as their schools return, different areas have different school holidays so use this to grab a bargain. Airport parking can be cheap and by departing elsewhere you can save serious £££'s. |
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April 2023
AuthorHi, I'm Ian Lockey. As a family we have loved travelling and just wanted to share our experiences online with friends, family and anyone else who drops in. |