Five great tips for finding late deal holidays

If you’ve read my earlier articles, you’ll know that I’m a great fan of late deal holidays, as these give you the chance to get a holiday that is often far more expensive than you would have been able to afford if you’d booked early.

In this article, I’ll give you four of my top tips for finding late deal holidays.

The first, and most obvious one is to check online. With the advent of the Internet, it’s never been easier to find late deal holidays. In the old days, you used to have to ring around travel agent after travel agent, in the hope of finding late deal cheap summer holidays. Nowadays you can just hop on the web and surf around. Take a look at some of the web sites listed below, as they are great places to find good late deal holidays.

Look for a package deal as these often work out much cheaper than buying a flight from one operator and booking a hotel from another. Depending on what time of year you search, you can often find a full package late deal holiday for less than the flights or hotel on their own. Again, check the web sites listed at the bottom of this article for some good starting points.

Most holiday web sites allow you to enter your e-mail address to sign up for alerts when special deals come in. These are a great way to keep up with the latest offers, without having to go back and check the web sites regularly. By the way, I strongly recommend setting up a new e-mail account with one of the free providers for this. One of the dangers of signing up for e-mail alerts is that you can end up getting loads of unwanted e-mails. Register a new e-mail with Google mail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail or one of the other free providers, and use that when signing up for travel alerts.

The very best way to get cheap late deal holidays is to take your break off-season. Now I know this isn’t always practical, especially if you have kids and need to go away when they are off school, but if you have the flexibility to choose when you go away, then off-season late deal holidays will save you a load of money. You’ll also have the added benefit that there will be less people travelling, so the beaches will be quieter, and the tourist attractions will have less visitors.

OK, I hope you found these tips helpful. If you take my advice, you should be able find late deal holidays without too much problem.

Don’t forget to check the web sites I mentioned for late deal holidays. These are by no means the only ones out there, but having been in the travel business for years, I prefer to recommend ones I know are trustworthy and backed by major companies. Here are those links again:

Style Holidays, Beach Collection, Directline skiing, Directline holidays, Low cost holidays and Directline city breaks

Until next time,
Susan

Topics: Cheap summer holidays, Finding late deal holidays

What are the best places for late deal holidays?

Whilst our own beautiful country has a lot going for it, hot sunny weather isn’t one of our strong points, and many people find themselves looking for late deal holidays to get away from the British weather. One of the advantages of the current financial problems is that many travel companies are offering late deal holidays at even better rates than usual, so you are very likely to be able to afford that last minute holiday in the sun.

So, where are the best places for late deal holidays? In no particular order, here are some of the ones I’ve found to be good choices. Remember, I’ve been in the travel business for many years, so whilst I haven’t visited all of these places, I’ve sent enough people to them to know what’s good and what isn’t!

Please note that I have no idea what kind of late deal holiday you are looking for, so not everything on this list might be suitable for you. Feel free to pick and choose…

There are of course plenty of other places you can choose for late deal holidays, but I would be here all day if I told you about all of the great places I know. It’s worth checking out some web sites to see what deals are on offer, as you’ll find late deal holidays in all of these places and more.

Enjoy your holiday!
Susan

Topics: Finding late deal holidays, Last minute holidays, Late deal holidays

Five things you must know when booking late deal holidays

Whilst late deal holidays are a great way to save some money, there are a few things you have to watch out for to make sure that your holiday doesn’t end up badly. Fortunately, most of these are simple and are easy to avoid. Here are the top five things I think you need to  think about when considering late deal holidays:

As I mentioned before, you have to accept that late deal holidays don’t give you the same choice as booking early, and you might not get the exact destination that you wanted. Prepare to be a little open-minded about where you want to go, and you should find something to suit.

Along the same lines, you might not be able to book the specific dates that you want. Depending on your situation, this might not be a problem, but you need to think about it carefully. If you are flexible in your travel dates, then you will find late deal holidays at good prices, but if you are tied to specific dates, you may be better off booking earlier and being sure that you will get your holiday on the dates you want.

Although late deal holidays are a great way to save money, you have to be careful that the cost doesn’t creep up with optional and not-so-optional extras. Some travel companies advertise cheap summer holidays that are actually no cheaper than normal, but that don’t have a lot of extras included in the price they quote. Some of these might be optional, like in-flight meals or overweight luggage, but many will be unavoidable charges such as check-in fees, booking fees, charges for every item of luggage you take with and so on. Make sure to read the small print, and only look at the fully inclusive price, irrespective of the advertised price.

Make sure you only book your holiday with a travel agent who is registered with ABTA, the Association of British Travel Agents, as this will give you some comeback if anything goes wrong with your holiday. If you are booking flights only, then make sure they are registered with ATOL, the Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing agency.

Even if the agents are registered with either ABTA or ATOL, you still need to have adequate travel insurance. This is true of any holiday, not just late deal holidays, but is very important. Don’t be tempted to save money by skipping the insurance, it just isn’t worth the modest charge, and if anything goes wrong, it can make a huge difference.

Well, if you take care of those five simple warnings, you should be able to find late deal holidays to suit your needs.

Until next time,
Susan

Topics: Finding late deal holidays, Late deal holidays

Why choose late deal holidays at all?

If you’re looking to cut costs on your next holiday, you should consider whether late deal holidays are right for you. They are a great way of saving money, but come with slight disadvantages that you should be aware of. In this article, I’ll compare the advantages and disadvantages of booking early against those for booking late deal holidays.

Why book early?
You can often save a lot of money by booking your holiday early. The reason for this is the old saying "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." The travel companies would rather sell the ticket at a lower cost and know they have the space filled, and will offer early birds a discount to encourage them to book well in advance.

So what’s the benefit of late deal holidays?
Whilst booking early is one way to get a good rate, you can often do a lot better by looking at late deal holidays. By the time it comes close to the departure date, the travel companies will be worried about having unsold spaces, and would rather sell them off at a hefty discount than lose out altogether.

Remember, they will have booked the aeroplane, hotel, etc in advance, and will have bought bulk spaces. It won’t cost them any extra to fill the last few seats. It’s much better for them to sell the ticket at half price and cover their costs, rather than leave the seat empty.

Are there any disadvantages to late deal holidays?
Oh yes, and you should be aware of these before you think about booking your late deal holiday. The most obvious disadvantage is that you won’t have the same choice of locations and travel dates as you would have it booked early. Remember, these late deal holidays are what’s left over when the early birds have paid up. You will be limited to whatever the travel companies have available.

Having said that, this is not necessarily a bad thing. As long as you are fairly flexible in where and when you travel, you should be able to find something that will suit your taste and pocket.

So how do I find late deal holidays?
The best way to do that is to look around the web sites of some of the bigger travel companies. They usually advertise their late deal holidays clearly, so you should be able to find something you like.

Start looking early, and make a note of the sort of places you would like to visit, and the approximate cost of the holiday. Keep an eye out as it gets later in the season, and see if the prices drop. You should be able to judge when is the right time to buy.

With a bit of research, you can find yourself late deal holidays to places that you simply couldn’t have afforded to visit if you’d booked early.

See you on the beach,
Susan

Topics: Cheap summer holidays, Late deal holidays

What are late deal holidays?

Before I spend too much time telling you how to find late deal holidays, I thought it would be a good idea to explain exactly what a late deal holiday is, and why travel agents offer them.

In an ideal world (for the travel agents at least), holidays would be offered early in the year, people would make up their minds where they wanted to go and when, book the holiday and never change their minds. Unforeseen circumstances would never arise, and the travel agents would be able to organise the exact number of places they needed in advance.

Thankfully for us, life is never that routine and boring, and travel agents often find themselves coping with unforeseen circumstances. One of these is where they find themselves with unbooked flights and hotels, and need to find people who want them. In order to ensure that the places are filled, they are often sold off cheap, and that’s where the late deal holidays arise.

So why does it happen? Well, there are a few reasons, including:

Unsold seats. Sometimes a tour operator will book more seats than they can sell. This can be bad planning, it can be due to a competitor getting a better deal, and so more business, or it can be due to external circumstances, such as political unrest in a foreign country that discourages people from travelling, a poor economy at home that makes people look for domestic holidays, or many other reasons. Whatever the cause, the end result is unsold seats as the travel date approaches.

Cancellations. As I said, in an ideal world, once people had made up their minds where they are going, and booked the holiday, there would never be any change. In practice things do change though, and people are forced to cancel a holiday. When this happens, they usually lose a percentage of the cost of the holiday, which allows the travel agent to sell the holiday to someone else at a discounted price.

Due to the pressure of fitting a large number of flights into a busy airport schedule, many flight operators offer flights that leave or arrive at antisocial hours, which are not popular with many people. In order to encourage them to book these flights, they offer them at lower rates than flights during the day.

Similarly, it is cheaper for the flight operator to book an aeroplane into or out of a smaller or off-the-beaten-track airport, as they don’t charge as much as the larger airports. Again, in order to encourage people to book these flights, they are offered at very cheap prices.

Occasionally, a travel company will buy bulk holidays from another company that went bust or changed business direction. Whilst this doesn’t happen too often, it can be a good source of cheap late deal holidays.

Whatever the cause of the late deal holidays, the one who benefits is you, as you get to pick up a great holiday for far else than it would cost if you had booked earlier.

Check out some of the web sites listed below for some great late deal holidays, and you’ll find that you can go places you never even dreamed of, for far less than you thought!

Speak to you soon,
Susan

Topics: Last minute holidays, Late deal holidays

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