Live webchat with Luke Gaskins, First Choice Family Travel Expert, Thurs 29th Jan 1 - 2pm

[CatherineMumsnet]

Luke's career in the travel industry began during university summer holidays when he was an activity instructor for school groups in France. He then spent 2 years with leading adventure tour operator, Explore Worldwide, before joining First Choice Holidays, where he undertook a number of roles, including the management of all Family Holiday concepts. He'll be available to answer any questions on family holidays such as where to go, what to do and how to get there.
As ever if you can't join in on Thurs then post your questions in advance.

Hi Rosa

A few of you have mentioned paying for seats together on an aircraft. Unfortunately seats together for an entire family can never be guaranteed for a variety of reasons, including change of aircraft configuration. To combat this, we offer those customers who really want to sit together as a group the opportunity to pre-book seating together and this does incur a charge, due to the fact that these reserved seats are carefully pre-seated manually by our seating team, in advance of the flight.

Hi StarlightMcKenzie,
Sorry for the mixed message - this is an airline issue, not a security issue. We understand the difficulties that families can encounter when travelling, it was one of the reasons we introduced a free infant luggage allowance earlier this year. With regards to buggies, we?ve trialled this before, however it caused some delays for other passengers onboard and we also had a few people forgetting to collect their buggies from us at the steps! However, I?ll feed these comments back to the team as it might be worth exploring again.

Hi Wordgirl,

How about a villa where you can have your own space and won?t have other people putting towels on your sunbeds! The boys will love it as they have their own space and they can enjoy their time while splashing in the pool or even sitting watching the TV in the villa. Or you could consider a villa complex, you would have a shared pool, but certainly wouldn?t be sharing with hundreds

Hello, geordieminx,

I totally agree with you and most operators do offer a more luxury product. We?ve got a dedicated Premier families brochure, which features only 4 and 5 star properties.

Hello Mousemate,

On the First Choice website you can?t just book a hotel - but our agents in store or via the call centre would be able to assist you with hotel only bookings. However, certain First Choice products are available only as a package.

Hello Filer,
That?s good to hear and I?ll pass this feedback on. Call me biased (having worked on the Family Villages right from the word go) but they really are ideal for family holidays. If you?ve not yet visited the Red Sea Holiday Village I?d really recommend it. The high ropes are fantastic and the location in Sharm el Sheikh is perfect for a year-round sunshine break.

To follderol

Sorry to hear your comments. Just to address a few quick points, our brochures do undergo a vigorous checking procedure, to ensure everything is as factually correct as possible at the time of print, however sometimes things do change once brochures are printed. Three months for a refund isn?t acceptable and we do appreciate we?ve had some issues with our customer service team. This has been addressed, with new procedures now in place, so if you?ve any issues in future (which hopefully you wont J), we hope to be able to deal with them much more quickly.

In addition, there is a project underway to ensure our shops and websites work together as ?service centres? to offer even better customer service ?watch this space!

Hi RTKangaMummy,

Thanks for your comments ? I?m going to pass them back to our senior management team. From my experience the crew are normally happy to give out water and I can only apologise that this didn?t happen during your flight. On a positive note ? I?m pleased you found our economy leg room to be good - our long haul flights offer more economy legroom that many scheduled airlines

Hi TwolfBySea,

Your best option is probably to visit your local travel agent to get them to dig out the best deals. As I mentioned to WingsTHEangel earlier, our there are some fantastic early booking offers available this year ? including free child places and with us, some single parent saver deals. Some people are quite sceptical about these deals, but a ?Holiday Which! report? last year showed that people who booked early did get the best prices. Another tip - avoid the middle of the summer holidays, the first and last weeks are genuinely better value.

Hi Flier,
We do our utmost to keep these charges to a minimum. Without going into all the details on fuel purchasing, we buy some of our fuel in advance ? sometimes over a 2 year period - at a fixed price, so this means that are costs are fixed for a set period. However, when you look at the supplements that we charge compared many airlines including BA, our costs are much lower. Some scheduled airline reduced fuel supplements, but they are still much higher than ours.

Hi basementbear,
Thanks for the feedback on the website
We do have night flights these offer excellent value for money customers do demand then. However, we also have lots of day flights available for this summer, for example Gatwick to Egypt leaving at 9.40am, Gatwick to Corfu leaving at 3pm and Manchester to Mallorca at 2.15pm. These are just three ? if you pop into your local travel agents they should be able to pull out the best flight times for you.

Hello
Hope this answers everyone's queries - do let us know if not and apologies again for the delay

thanks olivia