Search for Virgins Special Deals (Virgin Holidays)

Member Name: s.gould

Product:	Virgin Holidays
Date:	02/10/02 (1787 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Special Deal, Friendly Staff

Disadvantages: Reps sales pitch, Rubish shopping tour

I used Virgin Holidays Online to book our recent trip to Florida. It was the first time I have ever used an online travel agent to book a complete holiday.
For about a week I searched through various travel agents websites to try and find the best deal, and when I had almost come to the end of my hunting, I found a small icon on the Virgin Site. I had seen their Mega Deals page, but there is a small icon on the front page called Special Offers. I thought this was going to take me to the same pages, but instead came up 4 or 5 extra special saving holidays.
I was going to book my holiday to Florida with Virgin anyway, but I found the apartments I wanted on the Specials. It is the highest Virgin Holidays rated appartment and was offered for £50 discount each, and with Universal Studios 3 park unlimited access tickets thrown in and free car hire. All together it was a hell of a saving, especially that we wanted to go to Universal Studios anyway.
It was our first time to America and we wanted a relaxing holiday away from it all, so we didn?t want car hire, so I phoned Virgin Holidays and they kindly exchanged them for free transfers.
This gave me contact with Virgin Holidays directly, and I can tell you they were very nice and answered all of my questions, and I wasn?t left on hold for ages.

I had several phone calls to Virgin Holidays over the next few months, each time to pay of part of the balance, never waiting for long and receiving friendly service. It always makes a difference when companies have a friendly and helpful telephone service.

The next contact with Virgin Holidays was in Orlando, where we had to find the Virgin Desk to be transferred to our apartments. Orlando Airport covers quite a distance, and Virgin Holidays were the only travel agent that had signs pointing from customs all the way to their desk. So no problem at all ? unless you couldn?t read!

The last contact we had with Virgin Holidays was the first day
introduction meeting. Now this was their let down, and a waste of our time.
Our holiday was only 7 days long, so time was precious and 3 hours of wasted time is quite a bit, plus almost another full day wasted later was even worst (Ill explain in a bit).
I have been on quite a few of these intro meetings, but never with Virgin. Usually they are around an hour; let you know about the area and safety tips, but not with Virgin. They make you sit in a room for about half an hour, mess around, and then the intro starts. You blink and you miss the local area tips, and the rest of the time is spent on quite a hard sales pitch. Even worst, they have bussed you to the meeting point so you can?t even leave until their bus leaves.
One of the sales pitches is a free shopping tour to the shops where the locals shop, sounds good, and it includes free lunch, even better. Stupidly we thought this was a good offer, and after the talk we queued for about half an hour to book our day.
It turns out that you have to pay about £5 each deposit for this, with this being returned on the day in vouchers. Which turned out to be things like 10% off when you spend so much.

The day itself was a waste of time, and could have been spent better in Disney or Universal or even in the apartment.
The shops weren?t where the locals shopped, but tourist aimed outlets, that were actually more expensive than in the UK.
We spent most of the day sitting down waiting for the coach to take us to the next destination. In total there were 4 outlets we visited, and only one was half good.

The sales pitch and shopping tour almost ruined my view of Virgin Holidays, but they made up for it with a good holiday deal and friendly staff, and we can learn from this and avoid this in any future Virgin Holiday Holidays.

Summary: