to say that searching for a holiday online is just a terrible, awful, dismal process?

[Mintyy]

Honestly, in this household we both loathe and detest this annual torture! In the end one of us has to fall on the sword and sort it out but ye Gods I'd rather be the only one who cleans the toilets all year than try and find us a lovely self catering 2 week summer break more or less anywhere in Europe.

I don't really remember how it used to work in the days of travel agents, but seem to recall they only did package deals to hotels on the Costa Brava etc.

How would you book a camping holiday in France or a self catering in Portugal pre-internet? Was it from ads in the back of the paper?

Whatever it was it was a darnsiteeasierthanitisnow.

I know it is a first world problem but honestly I hate booking holidays. Especially as last year's holiday is never to be talked of again.

The stress, the pressure and the expense.

Teletext!

I have sympathy. We have enough trouble finding a suitable campsite in England for our annual week of rain and misery holiday.

Ah yes Teletext!

And of course I should have put in the first world problems disclaimer MrsCB, you are quite right. I daren't ask about last year ...

Teletext we used to get our holidays on teletext. Go to a travel agent

It's one of my favourite things to do!

My dad used to pore over maps of France for hours in the evenings, make plans for which routes to drive through France. We had a multi-site camping holiday one year and, I'm sure, all/most sites were pre-booked. I've often thought how difficult that must have been - all by crackly phone from the UK. Not even sure how he found the sites?

I want to know what happened last year as well MrsCB.

When exh and I were together I was in charge of booking the holiday.
And would get the blame for anything that went wrong.
Nightmare.

I hate it too. But you can't moan about it (except anonymously on MN) because that makes you look like the spoilt princess you are (me, not you). I hate the responsibility, I hate the endless peering at maps, I hate the cost. Then I go and have a fantastic time - it is always worth it. Nearly always.

Google Earth has probably made it harder now - checking how close the neighbours are etc.

I always use Expedia. It's always been straightforward. Never really found booking a holiday especially problematic as long as I have a rough idea where I want to go.

Let's just say that taking 3 smallish children to your DH's favourite place isn't always going to be a great success. His holidays with friends spent mountain biking doesn't always translate to a great family holiday destination.

The sand storms and rain didn't help either. And apparently children don't love standing up to eat their supper in small spanish bars.

It took us about 2 months to recover from that holiday. This summer we're doing 3 shorter breaks - let's see if I'm still married come September

This is why I went to lovely easy local travel agent. Delightful lady. Gave me 4 choices. Sorted.

In 1992 I needed to book a hostel room in Barcelona for one night and iirc it involved me buying The Rough Guide To Barcelona (whole paperback book), choosing one or two I fancied from the 6 they recommeneded and then getting a friend who spoke Spanish to ring up and book it for me.

But even that seems easier than what you would do now which is google "hostels in Barcelona", go through that endless process of reading the hostel blurb, reading the reviews on the website, reading the reviews on Trip Advisor, selecting a shortlist of say 4, clicking on their calendar, seeing they have rooms for the night you want, emailing or phoning them and finding out that actually they don't they are fully booked that night they just haven't updated their online information ... and repeat and repeat and repeat.

It is a pain. And I can never remember the bloody term dates for more than 5 minutes, so have to check them every single time I go through every single holiday permutation.

I feel your pain. I think the larger travel agents websites really aren't all that user friendly, places like Thomas Cook, First choice and tompsons and the like, they have too many options to make it easy to navigate. (and are really shit at letting you filter by stuff like "I want to fly from Gatwick on X dates, go self catering/5*/whatever and don't care where in Europe I want to go" - they all assume the starting point of your filter is you have a rough idea of where you want to go first).

This year, we're going away with PILs on a villa holiday, I therefore let DH do all the planning with his dad. So much easier.

God, yes, at homeowners who don't update their calendars. Or, really crappy search criteria so you have to keep playing about with all the options to make sure you've seen all the potential houses x 4 main sites.

Travel agents only really work for resorts and cities though. Did use one for a city holiday last year - so, so easy! Kept thinking I should be doing something, couldn't understand that it could be that simple.

Oh dear, MrsCB.

There used to be adverts for french gite companies in the papers such as Chez Nous, Allez france etc. You sent for their brochure, chose the gite and weeks. The company did the ferries for you.

tripadvisor just paralyses me with indecision. I am also convinced everyone else is in an amazing villa with pool in walking distance to gorgeous harbour for £250.

I don't really mind because we've always got a very limited budget range of ideas.

Was a bit dispirited tonight though - we watched The Canal Trip and were inspired with the idea of cycling the Bristol to Bath Sustrains path and then the Bath to Trowbridge part of the towpath. We thought we could take the train to Bristol, go and see the SS Great Britain, cycle to Bath, stay in the Bath youth hostel, see the Roman Baths, cycle to Trowbridge and get the train home. We were thrilled with this idea, everything seemed to be available and then we realised that this one night away was going to cost us £300 plus food. We've shelved it until the twelfth of never for a while.

Of course pudcat! You are so right. Brochures. That was the thing. Brochures full of holidays all more or less about the same thing. You could send off for them in January and flick through at your leisure.

Is it still cheaper online? Or are the Travel
Agents now competitive?