Holidays

[Cautiontothewind]

Posting for traffic really I guess but I'm looking at holidays for this year and I am shocked at how expensive they are! I knew they'd be a bit more but for 2 adults and 2 children in a family friendly hotel (some slides, a kids club etc) all inclusive it's well over £3000 for the likes of Spain, canaries etc for a week. It just seems extortionate and I know it's a luxury to go on holiday but we've never been and I'd love to take my kids before they get much older.

I did find some great ones on first choice yesterday morning for under the £3000 mark but when we went to look again that evening they were either gone or had gone up by a significant amount.

Anyone got any tips to finding a more affordable weeks holiday abroad?!

I'm assuming the OP is looking in school summer holidays, in which case your Caribbean holiday would be 3 x the price!

Eating out is cheaper in the Canaries.

Go SC and eat out once a day. Get easy food, drinks, snacks, ice creams etc from the supermarket. Stay somewhere within walking distance of a supermarket or decent convenience store as well as restaurants, beach etc. Sometimes there are apartment complexes where you can do any board from SC to AI but you can use the facilities, kids club etc.

Look on Jet2 holidays in the deals section for anywhere in the Canaries and order by price. Be as flexible as you can with destination and date and possibly look at the very end of August or even into early September if you can manage it with school term starting.

We looked at this hotel for August and it was going to be £7000 for two weeks (2a2c)

Book well in advance

I@IwaswhoIam it sounds lovely but will be much more expensive in the summer holidays. Have a great trip!

We are in the same boat. It’s so expensive at the moment.

I’m now thinking a last minute holiday will be our only option.

We are looking for a hotel with a kids pool, kids club which will take a 3 year old and either all inclusive or self catering with decent cooking facilities, somewhere to sit outside to eat and good food options nearby for when we don’t want to cook.

But £3k is probably what you should expect to pay for that holiday.

We normally pay around £8/900 for flights accommodation, luggage and transfers, but that's for B&B, two people and in June or September and we generally puck whichever date and destination is cheapest.

Upgrade to AI, at a more expensive time of year and for more people and it's easy to see why it's four times the cost.

This^. If you search for the same trip several times in quick succession you'll see the price go up and up. The other thing you can try is to open an incognito browser and refuse all cookies (you should always refuse all cookies anyway).

Your great deal in the Caribbean during term-time is irrelevant @IwaswhoIam to anyone who has to travel in the school holidays. The two things world's apart in terms of cost (as you are about to discover when your 3-year-old starts school).

@rookiemere gives good advice @Cautiontothewind. If despite trying all the tricks you still can't find anything suitable (and Bulgaria is NOT the same as Spain, to whoever posted the cheap trip to Sunny Beach or wherever it was), maybe your best bet is locking in a good price for 2023 and then paying it off gradually. Don't forget the cost of passports too - a new adult passport is £75 and a DC is £50.

We've booked South of France for August for 4 of is (3 adults, 1 child), cost us £1500 in total for 11 days. Booked travel and accommodation separately, much easier doing it that way x

Caribbean hotels usually doesn’t peak during term time because the majority of the travellers are coming from America and Canada where the school year works differently. I’m Canadian and have been going to the Caribbean for years, travelling from both Canada and from the U.K.

Peak season in the Caribbean ( the most expensive season ) is over the Winter months.

Flights are a different story but that’s why I suggested using air miles.

On Tui, look at different airports as sometimes you only get the free child spaces with certain ones. I had to book from Birmingham because if I went from Gatwick, it was going to be an extra 1.5k for my 2 year old!

This is great advice. Europe is become super expensive and quite honestly it's not much more to to go the carribean where you get nicer sea and probably better food. For the same money I'd pick the carribean.

Flights are a different story but that’s why I suggested using air miles.

Not everyone has air miles. Many don't actually. What do you suggest then?

I was thinking this! The only people I know with air miles fly within the US a lot. I've been on one return flight in the last 4 years and that was Easyjet.

I'm struggling too to find our holiday - have booked a couple in Spain previously with Jet2 and really liked the company but similar standard this year seem to be upwards of £5000 for four of us. I really want the ease of going to the local airport (Scotland) too otherwise driving somewhere in France sounds blissful.
I am not cooking on holiday. (Dh would cook: but would expect me to decide what he needed to cook and that's no better imho)
I never book as far in advance as some of you are suggesting though (I probably should!)Before covid I booked for Spain 3 days before we left

I would absolutely not do that. I feel much more confident booking a package that the flight would still go ahead. I think it's worth paying extra for the peace of mind

Packages aren't necessarily any more expensive.

We've had them from jet2holidays where it's been quite a bit cheaper than booking exactly the same flight and hotel separately, before you add on the cost of the transfer and hold luggage.

I used air miles as a generic term 🙊

We booked it using our credit card points . Im sure others have much better advice on this than me 😊

Another option is HB rather than AI.

For the holiday we're going on - Lanzarote 7 nights Oct half term - HB was only an extra £100 for the week for all of us, versus £750 for AI. As our party includes two 16 year old boys it's a bit of a no brainer. As I said to DH even if the food is rubbish - the reviews all say it's good - we can use it for them to take the dent off their appetite before going out. Can also swap dinner to lunch if we get bored.

Lunches at the hotel cost around 6-10 euros as do cocktails. I struggle to see why AI is so much more. We aren't big drinkers ( the 16 year old boys might try to be )and like to do a bit of exploring anyway so doubt we'd make much use of unlimited day time snacks and ice creams.

It's surely a minority of people who have sufficient 'air miles' to fly a family to the Caribbean cheaply.

We put over £20k pa on a credit card (normal spending and some work expenses, all paid off monthly) and it generates about £100 or so in cashback. If someone can tell me how I can get cheap long haul flights instead, I'd be very grateful.

'just use your air miles' is very 'only on Mumsnet'.

We never spend that much on a European holiday and we go abroad every summer. We don’t stay in hotels, they are more expensive and we prefer having separate rooms. There are loads of places you can fly to in Europe for under £100 pp. we then either book an apartment or eurocamp type place.

Get on EasyJet and Ryanair and then look at booking.com on 2 and 3 bed apartments with good facilities- most of them are 'pay when you get there too or a few days before' . Budget a certain amount a day for food and drinks- do breakfast at the apartment and a few snacks in day and eat out most nights. I think most AIS are not great value these days, particularly in school holidays -

Personally though I would fly and do Eurocamp - some great ones in Spain, Italy and France

I've just been. Austrian Airlines get utterly appalling reviews online but I found them, and their staff, to be fantastic. On the flight out a cabin crew member gave us lists and recommendations of the best off-the-beaten-track places to visit in his home city: he spent ages talking to us and was a real sweetheart. (The Swiss chocolates they handed out were delicious as well). We booked (for a nominal fee of £25) check-in baggage allowance and seat reservations on booking. All was very civilized and organized on boarding: no scrum. The very strict COVID regulations still in place should hopefully have relaxed by next year; as of now they are still insisting on COVID passports and FFP2 face masks.

As budget airlines go Jet 2 were in my experience pretty good: IME Lufthansa and there other two brands of Swiss and Austrian are always brilliant. I tend to avoid TUI and Easy Jet and won't fly RyanAir under any pretext.

Enjoy Austria! I love the way their cities always feel so safe and are incredibly friendly, which for Europe in this day and age is unusual.

You’ve left it very late for a good deal this year. We booked this summer’s holiday this time last year, and have just booked next summer’s holiday. Both times we got great deals on holidays we wouldn’t be able to afford had we waited.