How to Get the Best From Your Holiday?
There are now many places on the internet that give uncompromising comment which will helpfully avoid that holiday nightmare and help you select the hotel, flight and airport parking facility which best suits your needs.
Many holidaymakers still return year after year to the same destination and hotel because through trial and error they have found somewhere which matches their requirements and expectations.
My father in law for the last 15 years has gone to Cyprus to the same hotel at exactly the same week of the year because holidays had been pretty much hit and miss with something wrong with either the hotel or destination. Its not that they do not want to try elsewhere, but are wary of going somewhere and being disappointed and wasting their hard earned money and available leisure time.
Whilst, I am firmly in the camp that the world is a big place and seeing new places is part of the enjoyment, I have a lot of sympathy with this point of view and having suffered on more than one occasion from a poor standard of hotel or more usually its location.
The worst being when our hotel was 10 yards from an 18 to 30 hotel and disco with only an alley between and the rear of the room backing onto a car compound for illegally parked cars. When the disco ended in the early hours and you were just dropping off to sleep from sheer exhaustion you would be then woken by the dustbin men collecting the bins from the alley. Followed in the very early morning by the racket coming from the compound as agitated Spaniards came to retrieve their cars that had been towed away.
The description in the brochure about the hotel was spot on and the location well within the 200 yards of the beach. The holiday was a nightmare from start to finish.
We all have different ideas of what constitutes a good holiday and fortunately, the internet has made researching all aspects of traveling abroad so much easier. My wife will spend many a happy hour looking at destinations, flights, hotels, self accommodation, where best to fly from and whether to park the car at an off airport car park or use an airport hotel parking option.
There are now several sites that have become online forums giving real people’s view of the destination and accommodation in particular. By using a search term such as “holiday and hotel reviews” the most popular sites will be shown, such as Holidays Uncovered UK, Holiday Watchdog, Trip Advisor UK and Real Holiday Reports.
These and other sites are excellent reference points and will give uncompromising reviews covering the standard of rooms, meals, service and location. To be fair most hotels and self accommodation has improved enormously over the years due to the level of the competition and the one area we are most interested in is location.
This is an aspect where the normal brochure or owner web site can stretch the truth or omit important detail which may otherwise put off some people. They may mention for instance, that the Villa is less than a mile from local shops and restaurants; but omit to say that return journey is a 1 in 4 climb and will take you 45 minutes if your lucky. Its what they do not say and you have to read between the lines. These sites will now cover such items.
Another good place to try is the local travel information website, who you can contact by email with your selection of hotels, asking them to comment on noise levels, distance from beach and restaurants, the difficulty of walking and availability of taxis and the cost.
My wife recently enquired about Hydra in Greece and was advised that no cars were allowed on the island but donkey and water taxis would transport your luggage from the port to your location, this alone swayed the booking. Apparently, donkey owners wait outside tavernas to transport holidaymakers who have overdone the Ouzo back to their accommodation.
Turning to airport parking,having decided as an example that Gatwick offered the best prices and flight times, the best way to decide which car park or hotel to stop at is to use a Gatwick Airport Parking comparison site. This will list prices for both on and off airport car parks including distances from the terminals and also give you the option to view a selection of hotels close to the Gatwick with parking included as part of the package.
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