Hotel and holiday booking tips
Because I have been a travel industry insider for all my working life, I am quite often asked what tips I can give for booking hotels or holidays.
Booking your flight & hotel together at an online agency such as flex holidays or Expedia may save you money compared with separate bookings. More importantly though, by booking flight+hotel in one package gives you more protection should either element get cancelled for some reason. ATOL protection is important right now as unfortunately one of holiday suppliers could stop trading thanks to the credit-crunch.
Normally the big companies like Thomson have the best prices, and normally their best prices are had by booking online. Though sometimes agencies such as The Co-operative do get exclusive deals so it's always worth shopping around, or online window shopping as I call it. The reason Thomson are often cheapest despite their, in general, high quality products is firstly that they buy in bulk and can basically bully hotels into accepting their rates. Secondly they guarantee contracts with some hotels and most of their flights so they are committed to them, and this is why you sometime see crazy prices like £2 a night for a hotel. They figure any money is better than nothing if it looks likely to be otherwise empty.
Couple more tips:
If you have any tips on booking holidays please do share by leaving a comment.
If you spend a reasonable amount of money online it is well worth signing up to Rpoints where you can get cashback on hundreds of e-retailers without it costing you extra.
Use Kelkoo hotels to search multiple hotel booking websites at the same time. One hotel search is all you need.
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