Package holidays aren’t chavvy!

[Polarbearflavour]

DH and I booked a half board holiday via Teletext Holidays online. It includes flights and a five star hotel in Malta for a week and is pretty cheap.

A friend of mine made a face and said package holidays are “common” and for chavs. Apparently she only flies BA club class (not charter airlines or low cost airlines) and books hotels separately!

What on Earth is wrong with a package holiday deal?

I suppose that your friend is thinking of the all inclusive type of holiday they have shown on television recently. Clearly the holiday companies aren't just going to focus on that market though so she is at best being naive and also is extremely rude.

The hilarious myth that if you book accommodation in advance it must be like a prison and you must sit round the pool all day and not explore. Absolutely no diving, snorkeling, visiting temples, museums, markets, boat trips, jungle trekking, whale watching, zip lining, swimming in rivers, wildlife spotting and eating out allowed.

Holiday 1 - Family drive to Cornwall stay in nice cottage and spend days doing family things, go to beach or use communal pool (where other families are), sometimes eat at cafe next door or pop into town to try local restaurants.

Holiday 2 - Family fly to Spain, stay in nice hotel and spend days doing family things, go to beach or flop by pool with other people (oh, the horror), sometimes eat in on site restaurants or pop into town to try local restaurants.

In many ways the "hell" of the Abroad holiday is no different to the UK holiday. It's certainly not a prison!

It's not an either or choice. I'm doing longhauk, short haul, UK and other options this year. One doesn't preclude the other. You can do Cornwall and california and neither is a prison

The ignorant are clearly unable to think outside of the stereotypical package holiday box.

I have news for them:

Tour operators have upped their game.

"Absolutely no diving, snorkeling, visiting temples, museums, markets, boat trips, jungle trekking, whale watching, zip lining, swimming in rivers, wildlife spotting and eating out allowed."

Re. the eating out, you must be pretty well off to be able to pay for somewhere full or half board AND pay for eating out as well. If I had meals in a package, there's no way I could justify eating out every night as well.

Maybe the package doesn't include dinner? We've done half board once and didn't like it, but it was only £20 PP more than B&B so it wasn't a disaster to eat out a couple of times.

Now we do B&B or SC, both of which can be booked as a package and then eat out once or twice a day but make sure the room has a fridge or preferably a mini kitchen so we can store drinks or prepare simple meals.

We don't always get meals included. We often go room only or breakfast only and eat out. Sometimes self catering. Done room only many times in Caribbean, great restaurants. But even if we go all inclusive its nice to eat outside the hotel sometimes. We've only gone all inclusive since we've had kids and only in hotels with great food eg in Mauritius. I've never done full or half board only room only, breakfadt included or all inclusive.

Obviously if you were full board you would not eat out every night. Do places still do full board? Sounds v old fashioned like a Blackpool boarding house

Package holidays aren’t chavy.

Cheapo package holidays to Magaluf, are.