Hotel Booking Tips

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 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.

If you have any tips on booking holidays please do share by leaving a comment.

£1 hotel sale in London

It's back . . .

Good news for bargain hunters, the Hoxton Hotel £1 sale is back !
The Hoxton Hotel is in Shoreditch, close to Old Street (Northern line) tube station.

When ? 31st October at 12:00 (UK time)
What ? 500 rooms for £1, 500 more for £29
Stay ? 1st November 2008 – 31st January 2009

Warning : During their sale in April, they sold all 1,000 rooms within 19 minutes and had over 300,000 people trying to book so you'll need to be quick.

Hotel Jungle Tips:

• Use their html page not the flash page

• Do a dummy booking first to check if they have a room and so you are familiar with the booking process

• Make sure you have a few back-up dates and you know exactly when you can and can't visit the big smoke.

Here is the Hoxton Hotel guide to their £1 sale

£1 hotel room in London

Good news for bargain hunters, the Hoxton Hotel £1 sale is back !
The Hoxton Hotel is in Shoreditch, close to Old Street (Northern line) tube station.

When ? 3rd July at 13:00 (UK time)
What ? 500 rooms for £1, 500 more for £29

Warning : During the last sale in April, they sold all 1,000 rooms within 19 minutes and had over 300,000 people trying to book so you'll need to be quick.

Hotel Jungle Tips:
Use their html page not the flash page

Do a dummy booking first to check if they have a room and so you are familiar with the booking process

Make sure you have a few back-up dates and you know exactly when you can and can't visit the big smoke.

Here is the Hoxton Hotel guide to their £1 sale

£1 room in London

Hoxton Hotel in Shoreditch, London has done a great job of "doing a Ryanair" and getting plenty of free publicity in exchange for its £1 room sales.

The next sale is the 11th April at 12pm ( UK Time).
They will have 1,000 bedrooms up for grabs on their own website: 500 at £1 and 500 at £29, for dates between the 1st May – 31st July 2008.

Warning : During the last sale in January, they sold all 1,000 rooms within 29 minutes and had over 300,000 people trying to book so you'll need to be quick.

Hotel Jungle Tips:
Use their html page not the flash page

Do a dummy booking first to check if they have a room and so you are familiar with the booking process

Make sure you have a few back-up dates and you know exactly when you can and can't visit the big smoke.

Here is the Hoxton Hotel guide to their £1 sale

Good Luck - Remember, it's a Jungle out there.

4 nights in Turkey, 2 people, under a fiver !

What can you get for under a fiver these days ?


















* About 60% of the London congestion charge - 1 car, 1 day.











* 2 pints of Stella in an average boozer.












* 1 studio at the Kaan apartments in Dalaman, (fly to Dalaman, DLM).
It's got a pool, darts board, snack bar and is about 500 metres from the beach.
Total price for 24 May - 28 May, booked at sunshine.co.uk, £4.87. (!)




Now if only we could find some cheap flights to Dalaman to go with it . . .