My Holiday is Booked. Is Yours? (Going Places)

Member Name: carolinesite

Product:	Going Places
Date:	07/04/01 (836 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Booking early gives you peace of mind. A good deal.

Disadvantages: Have to buy own food, may have got it cheaper if we had waited until last minute

I have waited to post this opinion until I had actually booked the holiday, which I did this morning. I wasn’t going to post it first and let you lot beat me to the Travel Agents! Ha! There aint no flies on carolinesite ;-)

Firstly, after writing my opinion about a cruise I had in 1995, I felt I wanted another holiday like that. I picked up a few brochures from the Going Places shop, and sat down with a cup of coffee. I was horrified at how much the prices had gone up in 6 years. They were asking about £1,000 per person for a weeks cruise and a week on land, compared to £650 in 1995. I know prices go up, but a 40% increase in 6 years is disgusting. I gave that idea up.

Next, I looked through the Airtours Summer 2001 brochure. I was mainly looking for All Inclusive holidays, as they are good value for money. I wanted a relaxing holiday in the sun. Last year we had a holiday in Florida, and although there was plenty of sun, I wouldn’t say that it had been relaxing. Not with all the traipsing around the theme parks.
There were quite a few that interested me, mainly in Majorca, but then something else caught my eye. It was a self catering villa in Spain. Wow, I thought. It looked beautiful, and we would have our own pool too.
The price per person (I’ll get to that later) was slightly lower than an All Inclusive, but remember, we would have to buy our own food and drink.

It is a detached villa, with it’s own pool, sunbathing terrace, and a barbecue. They are available in 2, 3 or 4 bedrooms, and each has it’s own kitchenette with cooking rings, fridge, oven and grill, a bathroom and a lounge. A maid comes once a week, and a free grocery pack is left for us on arrival.
They are located in Costa Blanca, near Benidorm and Alicante, in either one of these resorts: Calpe, Benissa or Moraira (SE Spain). These resorts have a feel of ‘real’ Spain, with sandy beaches and small cov
es, a bustling harbour, weekly market and a large choice of restaurants. In Alicante, there is a large theme park called ‘Terra Mitca’, which I guess is their version of Alton Towers, by looking at the pictures.

Our party will consist of myself, my boyfriend, my 18 year old son, his 17 year old girlfriend, and my 9 year old son. After showing everyone the brochure, they all agreed it looked great. Everybody was happy for me to book it.

I rang our local Going Places agency to check for availability, and spoke to Jenny, a nice friendly, and very helpful young lady. She pointed out that because there were 5 of us, we could not have the villa for 4. We had to take the villa for 6. This meant we had to pay an under occupancy fee. We were going for 14 nights, so it worked out to about £600! I nearly died, and thought the holiday had died as well until she pointed out that because we were booking through that particular brochure, we were entitled to a 20% discount on the whole holiday. This worked out to about £600. Which meant the discount cancelled out the under occupancy fee. The holiday was on again.
Now, this particular holiday allows a child to go free, and the great part is that the child can be up to age 19! A second child then travels for £139.
Are you seeing where I’m headed? That’s right, if I let my 18 year old son take the free child place, he would then pay the £139 fee for my 9 year old, which has saved him a pretty pound. Adult prices are £679 each for the 2 weeks, including flights.

There is also a £35 flight supplement which we cannot get out of because we are travelling at a weekend.
Now that’s not all. Included in the price is car hire and insurance. One car and insurance is given to a 2 bedroom villa and 2 cars are given to 3 and 4 bedroom villa’s. This means that we will get 2 hire cars. The car is an Opel Corsa, 1.0. I guess we would need both cars to
get us and our luggage to our villa, but after that one car would remain redundant.

Going Places have done us a good deal on the insurance too. £82.94 for our whole party.

We are going on September 22nd, flying from Luton at 2.30 PM, arriving at Alicante Airport at 6 PM. We will depart on 6th October, leaving Alicante at 7 PM, arriving at Luton at 8.35 PM (times include BST). This time of year in Spain is still very hot, with average temperatures still in the 80’s.

So that’s where I’m going this year. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.

I know that if we wait until the last minute we may get a cheaper deal, but I do like to have peace of mind, knowing my holiday is booked.

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