take the stress out of holiday booking (Teletext Holidays)

Member Name: west_jenn

Product:	Teletext Holidays
Date:	08/04/03 (5518 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: easy to use, can get a good deal

Disadvantages: what's on the screen may be gone

Searching for holidays online can be a bit of a minefield, one the one hand you can find great deals and see a range of choice that you may not find walking around travel agents and looking through brochures. However, the choice and different website can be bewildering. This is why teletext is such a great site to look at. Essentially it's like a portal site linking you to holiday offers based on the requirements you enter into their search engine.

The home page is well organised and the different sections are colour coded, I like a bit of colour coding! On the homepage you have the opportunity to do a quick search for a holiday based on where and when you want to go, how much you want to pay and where you want to go from, if you want you can order the results by price, date, destination, departure point and holiday company.

After you've done this you will get a list of results. If you click on one of these results you'll be taken to a separate page with brief details of the holiday, the name of the company, a link to their website if they have one and a phone number to ring to book the holiday.

There are five tabs at the top of the homepage that relate to different types of holidays these are Overseas, UK and Ireland, Flights, Ski and Cruise.

1 OVERSEAS

Clicking on the overseas tab will take you to a page with the offers of the week and links for holiday searches, late deals, guides and ideas, holiday essentials and advice.

HOLIDAY SEARCH
This is a more detailed version of the search on the home page. You can search by destination, departure date and departure range, duration, board basis, price range and share basis you can also order the results by any of these variables.

The holiday search section also has the following options:
HOTEL SEARCH: Search for hotel availability and prices in worldwide cities

ACCOMMODATION DIRECTORY: Lists ads and links for holiday companies tha
t offer accommodation

FRENCH HOLIDAYS: Ads for companies offering french holidays

FERRY BOOKING: Check ferry crossing availability and prices

TRAVEL INSURANCE: Research and book travel insurance

AIRPORT PARKING

2 LATE DEALS

Within the late deals section you can do a late holiday search and browse teletext ads.

BROWSE OUR LATEST DEALS
You look at holiday deals under the headings of different holiday companys, bargains and different types of holidays such as city breaks and worldwide luxury

LATE AVAILABILITY
You can search for any holidays departing on a certain day without specifying a destination you can sort by price, destination, board basis and price

BROWSR TV TEXT ADS
This is a really good one you can look at teletext ads as you would see them on the television teletext, you can look at your leisure unlike the tv when the ads rotate on a fixed basis.


GUIDES AND IDEAS

Within guides and ideas there is a page to find out a bit about different destination sights, average cost for holiday, weather etc. There's something called ten of the best which lists holidays under interests ie culture, offbeat, sun and sand and pets. There is also a facility to order free brochures

HOLIDAY ESSENTIALS

Travel handbook: This gives practical information regarding visas and vaccinations needed for different destinations, You can also gets tips on avoiding health problems, travelling with children and travelling with special requirements such as being tall or pregnant (and maybe both!)

There?s a facility for checking the weather now and for the next couple of days in different destinations. You can also order language learning courses. There's a currency convertor and online currency order which is apparently commission free.

ADVICE
This section includes travel questions and answers and the latest advice from the foreign of
fice.Also there are steps to a trouble free holiday which are fairly common sense ie taking care of ordering special requirements such as cots before you go. There is also quite a useful section on what to do if you have a problem when you are on holiday and what to do about it if you want to complain about it when you return. There's also a section on the organisations that oversee travel companies and what you have a grievance against a company

3 UK AND IRELAND

HOLIDAY SEARCH
You can search for UK holidays in the same way that you can look for overseas holidays the only difference is some of the search terms are different you can search by property type (ie caravan or boat centre) and facilities (cots, kids club, disco)

LATE DEALS
You can search for late deal holidays or browse through teletext tv ads for uk holidays. There is also a section for car hire and booking London hotels

GUIDES AND IDEAS
This section is very much like the overseas one. There is a destination where you can find out more about different Uk destination, you can order free leaflets for days out in England, there are English holiday ideas and a top ten section matching your interests to holidays

HOLIDAY ESSENTIALS
There is a travel handbook with what do to before you go advice, health and safety advice and special requirements advice (ie if you have pets, babies or are disabled)
There is also a section for weather checking, car hiring and travel insurance

ADVICE
This is practically the same as the advice in the overseas section

4 FLIGHTS

If you follow the link for holiday search on the flights homepage you can search for a flight based on departure point, destination, departure date and date returning. There is a section to look at flight bargains of the week. Also there is a section to look at hotel booking and accommodation.

You can check recent UK flight arrivals from all airports <
br>
LATE DEALS: You can check late availability flights or look for flights under travel companies or destinations

5 SKI

HOLIDAY SEARCH
You can search for holidays to ski resorts.

LATE DEALS
Search for late availabity ski holidays. You can also browse latest deals and look at tv teletext ads

GUIDES AND IDEAS
Within this section there is a guide to resorts. Through 'ten of the best' you can match your requirement to a ski holiday ie family, budget. There is a facility to check the snow and weather at different ski resorts and you can also order free brochures.

HOLIDAY ESSENTIALS
Ski Handbook: This includes what to take with you, how to avoid avalanches and what to do about injuries. There is a section for online hiring and buying of ski equipment.

6 CRUISE

HOLIDAY SEARCH
You can look for a holiday via cruise area, cruise line, cruise ship, price, cabin, departure and duration

LATE DEALS
You can look for late holidays or browse teletext tv ads for cruises.

GUIDES AND IDEAS

In this section there are ship guides where you can select a cruise line and then a ship and find our about its facilities. You can look through the port guide which is a guide to the cruise areas of the world

I've only really used this site too look for holidays and look at the teletext ads so when I had a good look around the site I was amazed at just what this site did have. Particularly interesting I think were the destination guides and the way you can match your interests up with holidays.

I've always found the site easy to use and simple to navigate, it's always really clear what part of the site you are in, so there is no chance of getting 'lost' within the site.

Teletext doesn't have every possible holiday on it and I've found things elsewhere that weren't on teletext. So I always tend to check the websites
of the holiday companies that are offering holidays on teletext, just in case there are some deals that haven't been included on teletext.

Don't take what comes up on the screen as gospel we've tried ringing up for several holidays advertised on teletext to find that they're no longer available. The holiday companies can move quicker than the updating of the teletext database. Also it's a good idea to ring round some companies anyway just in case they have something that hasn't yet been added to teletext.

Despite this it's a great site to look, it's very comprehensive and must be useful to people who go on slightly 'different' holidays such as cruises and skiing.

thanks for reading!

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