How to Book A Budget Foreign Holiday

 

The world is your oyster when it comes to booking foreign holidays if money is no object. However, I’m sure I’m not alone in finding that money seems to avoid me like the plague. These few lines are aimed at those wishing to book it all themselves online and to a budget. For the purpose of this article I will talk about booking a holiday in Crete.

We had planned to go away around the middle of September (school holidays finished, therefore cheaper flights, hotels etc. and Cretan sun not so hot). To make sure I knew that I was getting the best value for money I could at the moment I clicked “Buy” or “Make reservation” I started looking around the web at my chosen destinations and of course the flight options, at least 4 months in advance. This way I knew where I was going, how I was getting there, where I was going to stay and how much it was all going to cost. Also found that this helps you to look forward to going all the more too!!

Flights

So where do we start? How long are you going for? This might be dictated by the airport of your choice, as I discovered when I tried to go from Stanstead for 10 days. Nothing against Stanstead, but my searches only came up with options for 7 or 14 day return flights to Heraklion.

It soon became obvious that if I wanted to go for 10 days I would need to go further afield. This website is full of useful tips and options for getting value for money. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-flights#when It really does offer good impartial advice on all manner of flight and holiday topics. Lots of links to bargain flight operators too.

Most websites carry adverts for all kinds of things. If they appear to be what you are after, they are sometimes worth a look.

It might happen that to get a cheaper flight you need to consider taking a flight in the middle of the night, or a flight which would get you to your destination airport at 3 o’clock in the morning This is fine if you arrive in a nice safe place like Heraklion, but as we know not all destinations are quite so welcoming to the weary novice holidaymaker in the wee small hours. Even in a safe place like Heraklion I thought this option is not for me, just keep looking at all the flight options for your destination and weigh up what suits your budget and preferences. For example, last time we found flights leaving Gatwick at a time where we could arrive and park, fly out and be in Heraklion in time for an evening out.

Depending on where you have to travel from to reach your departure airport, it’s a good idea to consider the what ifs’ for your return flight too. The thought of driving home after a day on a hot beach and then a flight which gets you back at 1 o’clock in the morning is not always appealing. If you are lucky, public transport is the obvious choice. If this is not an option most taxi companies will offer an airport service where they will do door to door and collect you from the airport upon your return. This can be a pricey option, but well worth considering if there’s a group of you. The option we chose the last couple of times was to book a hotel for the night of our return and park the car there before our outward flight. These hotels usually run a shuttle bus service to the airport terminal. This website is an example for Gatwick.

http://www.holidayextras.co.uk/gatwick-airport-hotels.html? Last year (2008) we had a room in a quality hotel with parking for 10 days for £115. Peace of mind and you know you car is safe.

Before I leave the subject of flights, I thought I would mention Airmiles. http://www.airmiles.co.uk/ More and more places are now rewarding customers with airmiles. Look on the site and see where you can collect airmiles just for doing your weekly shop, or even putting fuel in your car.

You might find that you don’t have sufficient miles on your account to fly to your chosen destination, but they do various options with cash & miles or even just cash. Hotels are also covered as well as car hire.

To give you an example, last year we paid £70 plus 1,800 or so airmiles and we had car hire for a week and a quality hotel for our first night in Heraklion. Not bad just for grocery shopping and petrol.

Chosing your Hotels

The thought of a package holiday to any one resort is just not for me. What happens if you arrive there and the bed’s too hard, the fridge in your room makes a noise like a Chinook helicopter, the nightlife is too close to your hotel and too noisy, the beach is no good etc. etc. etc. Let me tell you. You’re stuck with it for the week or 2 or however long you have booked it for.

There’s nothing worse than a miserable holiday destination as we found out on our honeymoon. My poor wife was in tears on 2 separate occasions just because of the rotten place we had chosen.

Older and wiser when we were able to afford foreign holidays again, I did all the research and put together a holiday where we visited 3 different places over the 10 days, starting and finishing in Heraklion for the flights. The beauty of this is, if you are not so happy with one place, you only have a couple of nights there and you’re off to the next one.

Once you have an idea where you would like to visit, put a general search into your search engine for the place name. The example I have shown here was one of the places we visited last year. This website came up after 2 clicks on the search results.

http://www.sfakia-crete.com/sfakia-crete/sfakia-crete.html

As you can see from the links, all manner of useful stuff is covered and this is very typical of what you will find when such a search is carried out.

Just click on the accommodation links, contact them and make your reservation. It’s as simple as that. Be sure to print off your confirmation though, as this will be needed upon arrival at the hotel reception. This also applies for your flights of course, as lots of airlines don’t issue tickets now.

I hope that this is easy to follow and makes sense. I’m new to Hubpages, but will keep on adding more bits and pieces. If I have missed out anything obvious, please contact me and I’ll be more than pleased to help if I can.

Happy Holidays.