Hello holiday fans,
Family has broadly agreed on either Sri Lanka or Malaysia for our family holiday this year. We can only go mid August for up to 14 days. Mum, Dad, son aged 20 and daughter aged 11 so two hotel rooms. Budget up to 10k if paying for meals separately or 12kish if all inclusive.
I'm a creature of habit and usually book with Tui as we've had some lovely holidays with them but Tui's options for Sri Lanka aren't great (flight options are night flights both ends and we are also quite keen on staying in Negombo and there's only one resort option). Tui only offers one option for Malaysia which is a multi stop adventure holiday which looks too intense and exhausting (we like a mix of chilling and exploring).
Best At Travel has some really great looking options for both SL (better flight options including direct and more Negombo resorts) and Malaysia. I'm really tempted by the BAT combined trips to Singapore/Penang or Kuala Lumpur/Penang/Langkawi. They seem to be an established company but I've not used them before. The pricing seems to be indicative and "call for a quote" which is less transparent than Tui where you can see everything online.
Reviews are generally positive (85%) but some very negative ones, though mostly these are about slow refunds when covid hit in 2020.
Any recommendations or warnings (or tips!) about BAT or other operators offering what we need?
Whether our budget is realistic?
Whether it's worth considering AI or not? (We went to Thailand a couple of years ago and opted out of AI and were so glad as restaurants were so inexpensive and varied out of the resort.) Have heard Singapore expensive but if we picked that one, we'd only be there 3 nights.
Thanks all!