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 am convinced that there are millions to be made from making it easier for people. A kind of online travel agent who does the searching for you and comes up with 5 options.

Yes Mintyy I loved looking through the brochures and just making a decision based on a couple of photos and the companies write up. No trip adviser in those days. No Google street scene to look at the areas. BUT we had some wonderful gites and holidays.

Oooo I love it too Coconutty, often have a stash of places saved up that I want to go to. Could happily spend days and days researching places to go

I plan holidays as a hobby. We almost never go though, since we had kids.

My mother used to order a Eurocamp brochure and it would sit in the bathroom for months as we all took turns flicking through it. They'd pick out sites and we'd turn up at them with our own tent and just pay a few quid for a pitch (it was a lot cheaper then!).

They only ever booked the ferry in advance as well, never the campsites. I could never go on holidays without knowing where we were going to sleep.

I hate it but dh loves doing it. Since I am such a considerate dw, I let him crack on

dh and I used to drive through europe with our little tent looking for camping ground signs. We also had the Alan Rogers camping guide. Never booked and it usually worked.
now though as everyone has internet you have to book so much more.

train travel was fun too. I rember sitting there with a giant timetable book for europe trying to figure out how to get across. Cant believe i used to do that by myself with no phone and no internet.

Booking holidays is heavenly! I don't understand what's not to like?

I love booking holidays!

I have a special folder full of print offs from tripadvisor, train timetables, local points of interest, printouts from forums

Having said that, we don't actually tend to go abroad.

I'm doing this at the moment for the may half term, I loathe and despise it. Nobody can decide where to go, Europe? Middle East? It must be on the beach, it must have a pool with a water slide, their must not be a long transfer when you land......and so the list goes on. Such a first world problem and I hate myself a bit but there you go.

I love travelling and we go away.....often

In fact on friday it will be our fifth break since mid feb and our ninth week of holiday but I hate doing the sorting,the juggling and so on as this is a four centre holiday compared to the three centre one last month.

I have a price in my head that I'm prepared to pay so that's a struggle in itself to match it our get under it.

But the sense of achievement when it's done is like winning the lottery.

I got a lovely bargain today. Not a Holiday but totally out of the blue. I expected to pay nearly £30 for something and was asked for £4-25. Great! A very kind gesture.

Was over the moon. Whenever I go to the city and we go to the cinema I always buy a Cornish pasty and some soup for whoever is sitting on the ground wrapped in blankets . It's often not the same guy but it doesn't matter.
I like to think I'm paying it forward, so when some good fortune comes my way I've shared it out.

What goes around ones around.

Maybe the secret is to do it for each other.

Then you are one step away from it so less stress

I'm looking for a clean, central budget hotel that will sleep two adults and three young children on June 12 for two nights in Edinburgh. Visiting Zoo .

Any takers?

I've looked and looked and can't get anything under £80.

Why is Edinburgh so blummin expensive, Glasgow isn't.

Tenerife? I know the perfect place.
Kewtogetin

There's your answer Mintyy, get a MNer who loves booking holidays to do it for you

I don't mind closing somewhere, but that's probably because I've got pretty low standards, so am easily pleased. What I do hate is that as soon as I've paid for a holiday let, I get flashbacks of those episodes of Watchdog where people get defrauded, and spend the weeks in the run up to the holiday ruminating about being abandoned by some taxi driver in the place where our nonexistent villa should be. Has never happened, but I continue to fret.

Too much information and too much choice now.

We've been a bit committed to the same place for a few years now but I used to love poring over a pile of brochures, timetables and maps, I adore maps!

International Directory Enquiries facilitated haggling with hotels and you used to be able to phone an airline, get an answer from a person within a couple of minutes, and book a flight.

Dowser - This any good?

Looks good enough for me Edith, will pass on to my daughter ;-)

I have a love/hate relationship with researching and booking holidays. I usually spend longer researching than we are actually away for. I make full use of spreadsheets and check prices (don't forget to include extras, you have to factor it all in so they are more or less equal/compatible) and check all the review sites I can find. It's a complicated old process but I also don't want to waste my hard-earned money on a crappy holiday when I could have done better. I did find some cracking hotels at great prices for our big blow-out holiday last year and was well chuffed with myself . It was certainly worth all the research.

It was hell.
Before the likes of ryanair air travel was prohibitivel expensive
My parents are Irish and we could only go once a year on the ferry to visit their parents. Now it's possibl to go regularly

I love agonising over the villas etc for the big summer holiday. Am always relieved when the place actually exists though fingers crossed for this year.

Ah Edith, it's too late. In the time it took to email my daughter it's gone. One night available but not the two.

:-(

Thank you, though. Will keep it in mind.

Too much choice is definitely the problem.

But I guess you can say that about the whole of online life .

I remember booking a German campsite by letter in the mid 90s. Lovely place in the Rheinpfalz, although they seemed to think we were Norwegian.

Hate it, hate it, HATE IT.
It consumes days of endless tapping on a screen. I've never succeeding in finding any website that gives me an actual price for 6 of us somewhere in a hotel. That's one of the reasons we've never been to Disneyland, and why we always rent houses.
Reviews are a nightmare. I can read 15 brilliant ones then one that describes the holiday from hell pops up and puts me right off.
I also hate that all the onus is on me. It's as if the whole years happiness of the 6 of us rests on my shoulders.
I'm not even sure I like being on holiday that much when I get there

Disgrace.

We are holidaying in Germany this year (Bavaria on the way to Austria so plan to visit Munich and Salzburg). Have reached the age of over 50 and never been to Germany - so this was the year we decided to go. I think we were looking at websites and doing our research and emailing to and fro for about 4 weeks of utter tedium.

Let's hope the place we've chosen is ok then eh?

Oh, bummer, Dowser. Looked good value.

Yes, yes, to spending more time on research than the length of time of the actual break.