Co-op offer unbiased advice (Co-op Travel)

Member Name: Tris911

Product:	Co-op Travel
Date:	21/02/03 (202 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Unbiased, Lots of information about resort, Good customer service before & after holiday

Disadvantages: Limited by what tour operators offer

We wanted a holiday to Lanzarote late last year as we felt we needed a break. We did the usual thing of wading through brochures and flicking between neverending Teletext pages to try and find a bargain which does not come across as if we were going to be sharing our accommodation with a family of sombrero-laden cockroaches.

In the end, we decided that paying a little extra might be worth it so we had a look around the local travel agents for any offers. I had read about Travelcare on a website and it looked like a good place to start as they offered unbiased advice from a range of tour operators.

We knew pretty much the area that we wanted to go and the sort of money that we wanted to spend. The representative that we met entered our requirements into the computer and she came up with a list of brochures and hotels that matched what we wanted. She then took us through the brochures and slowly but surely we went down the list with the rep and shortlisted a few hotels. I have to make it clear that these brochures were from a wide range of tour operators. We had trouble fitting them all on the desk and keeping track of which was which!

It really was just a case of looking at the brochure description and deciding whether we liked the look of the place. You can think of Travelcare like a holiday search engine that goes through all the brochures for you to find the right places and then offers you them cheaper than the brochure price. Most if not all of the prices that were quoted were cheaper than the brochure prices.

The representative gave us detailed information on the resort we were interested in and in some cases was able to give an independent review of the hotel

We finally decided on a hotel and departure time and was given the option to book airport parking at the same time. We thought it might be cheaper to do this ourselves but we wished we had gone with their quote as we couldn't find the same parkin
g cheaper.

Insurance was free and we got extended insurance thrown in for next to nothing.

The holiday itself was great other than the poor quality of the Libra tour reps. We made a small complaint about this when we got back and Travelcare acted very responsibly as a middle-man between us and the tour operator.

I would certainly recommend Travelcare if you are going to go the travel agent route to get your holiday. They are unbiased with their opinion and their representatives are not paid commission so they wont try and sell you something you don't want. If you were thinking of going on a brochure holiday, then I'd see if Travelcare do it cheaper as they must get some sort of discount from the tour operators.

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