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.
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.
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.
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
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Keep travelling and keep exploring.