I've been booking d.i.y. for years and found that you can get better prices for accommodation with the consolidators such as Travel Republic, Lowcost etc than by booking direct with the hotels.

It really depends what you are booking. Always worth checking all options to find the best price:
1. Online travel agent (travel republic, on the beach, etc).
2. Airline direct site and hotel direct site
3. Tour Operator package (Thomas Cook, First Choice, Thomsons).

Just remember if you choose option 2 then you don't have any financial protection.

The initial post was started in 2010 and refers to booking holidays for us as residents now living outside of the UK... (We've been living here in Cyprus for a little over 10 years).

We can't book UK package holidays and DIY is cheaper than going through any of the local Cyprus agents as they add an additional "service" fee per person onto the top of each price.

Accommodation only prices now, we can get some deals in the local area with DailyDealsCy - in their "Getaways" offers but they are time limited and to be truthful, it's still cheaper to use the likes of Travel Republic for AO.

For instance, we're going to The Annabelle in Paphos for 1 night next weekend and I just checked the online prices with TR for a standard twin on BB

With TR - it's 151.00 GBP total cost for 2 people in 1 room (or, 183.56 EUR)
With a local agent and booking via their website - it's 253.88 EUR

Not bad eh?
100 EUR for letting your customer do all the booking....

I generally do option 2, direct with airline and direct with hotel , had no problems and prefer it to using either of the other options .

So far always had the seat on the plane I've chosen for free at the time of booking and sometimes had the hotel room I've booked because the other times I'm upgraded .
With regards to transfers , I'm quite capable of knowing how to get a taxi , but usually book a transfer with the hotel who on most occasions send a limo for a very reasonable price or even free .

Flight always booked direct with airline, hotel with one of the consolidators and transfer usually booked with A2B or similar for the past few years, as I can't be bothered to haggle with taxi drivers at the start of my holiday.

For the first time in years I've just booked my next trip as a package. Flights from Stansted to Tunisia are limited to Thomas Cook or Thomson and flights were coming up at around £234 plus hold baggage both on the TC site and with Travel Republic. I checked TC for a package and the same priced flight included baggage, with 2 weeks half board at a decent hotel and transfers (plus a totally unnecessary rep) for just under £430. I then priced it up on Travel Republic and tthe same flight and hotel was over £150 more. This won't put me off booking separately in future but will ensure I check my options.

I almost always go DIY but I still price up packages if its feasible. I have gone with Kuoni to Thailand in the past.

Aslemma wrote:

For the first time in years I've just booked my next trip as a package. Flights from Stansted to Tunisia are limited to Thomas Cook or Thomson and flights were coming up at around £234 plus hold baggage both on the TC site and with Travel Republic. I checked TC for a package and the same priced flight included baggage, with 2 weeks half board at a decent hotel and transfers (plus a totally unnecessary rep) for just under £430. I then priced it up on Travel Republic and tthe same flight and hotel was over £150 more. This won't put me off booking separately in future but will ensure I check my options.

Sounds an excellent deal Aslemma It's always worth keeping your options open re package verses DIY. Recently come back from a package, Thomson flights and a 4 bed, 3 bath farmhouse villa with a pool, £580. At £290 per person for a week it is probably the cheapest holiday we have had in the last 20 years. booked 4 weeks before travelling, maybe that is a good time to nab a cheap package ?

Doe

We did DIY for years but now find it hard to get near the tour operators price. The air fare is often close to having a package now.

The only problem I find with packages is the limited choice of hotels available, whereas booking independently one has far more options. I was lucky this time as TC were offering a hotel I'm familiar with.

We booked to travel with 2 friends for Malta later this year and because we cannot book "package" holidays as we know them in UK from Cyprus, DIY is the most favoured option for us.

Some agencies now put their own packages together (since this thread started in 2010) but accommodation choices are less and there are only so many places on offer, destination wise...

We checked flight prices on Skyscanner for our flight LCA to MLA direct. The route is a code share between Air Malta and Emirates with the flight supplied by Emirates and takes the route Dubai to Larnaca and onwards to Malta so we get a direct flight on both legs of the journey.

Over the past 8 years we've done this route regularly each February and sometimes it's cheaper to book direct with Emirates and others with Air Malta. This time, it was cheaper to use one of the Greek operators which came up on the Skyscanner results.

For our accommodation, I hunted high and low for hotels with good reviews as Malta tends to get poor reviews on accommodation unless you pay really top end prices or stay in the very north of the island near Mellhiea which isn't where we wanted to be. So we're going back to Qawra where we're familiar with the hotels and know there are no "shaft rooms" to catch us out.

We found a hotel where we know the location and that we've had our eye on for some time but it's generally closed in February. This time I found the better deal with the hotel - not for the price but for the flexibility. The price was the same with a bed bookers site as booking with the hotel but we will pay the hotel on arrival which means no need for fork out for the rooms 10 weeks in advance.

The cost for 7 nights on B+B is 280 EUR per couple. The flights came to around 430 EUR per couple but as we've been pooling our bimonthly Monday night bingo winnings each time, we've got 600 EUR to put towards the costs of the flights.

All in all, we will get a week in Malta for less than 500 EUR per couple so more in our pockets for spending when we're there.

This is now getting tricky............

For many years we have traveled fairly extensively, usually several times a year. There are still some elements of travel (for instance stand-alone flights) which work out extremely favourably, directly from the supplier (BA is a good example). We have also used a mixture of DIY and package in the past, especially for a trip to more than one destination or country.

We have noticed more and more, recently, that by shopping around for a "package" solution (whether that be for an advertised total package or for a bespoke "package" solution from a specialist such as Trailfinders) it can work out to be a lot cheaper.

Earlier in the year we visited Thailand - packaged by Trailfinders, using EVA Air promotional pricing and their own hotel prices, which worked out cheaper than I could get for flight, hotels, and transfers directly.

Over the Summer, we took a holiday to the Canaries comprising Flights with Norwegian and a RUI hotel - once again cheaper through Thomson.

We have just booked to go to Mauritius (BA didn't fly on the dates we required, so we are flying Emirates - which in itself was cheaper). A package deal of flights, hotel and private transfer through Hayes & Jarvis was cheaper than anything I could put together.

As I have been putting together our vacation trips and my own business travel for many years, I am not incapable of sniffing out the good deals, knowing where the best flight prices may be or using "loyalty card" discounts or similar. In fact I have always rather enjoyed the challenge

Does any other previously committed DIY'er have a view on why this may be the case.

Thanks

Peter

For the Cambodia part of our last holiday we did do a package. Flights and hotel ( 4 nights) were almost as cheap as flights alone.

For years I've booked flights/hotel/transfers independently for my regular visits to Tunisia, using BA (until they stopped flying to Tunis) or TC flights, Travel Republic or similar for the hotel and A2B Transfers but this year it worked out quite a bit cheaper booking a package with Thomas Cook as their flights also included luggage and transfer when bought as part of a package holiday. They only had one hotel on offer but fortunately this was one I knew and liked. You really do need to check all options. One of my main reasons for not usually booking a package is the limited choice of hotels on offer by the tour operators but this year I struck it lucky.

I haven't had a long haul holiday for a couple of years now but in the past I mostly booked them either totally independently or a mixture of independent and small group tours and could always beat the prices of travel agents. Must admit though that my holidays have often been a bit off the beaten track so wouldn't usually be part of a normal package.

Now that I am mostly pretty much holidaying short/ medium haul I find that I can rarely beat the price of a package offered by a TA. I have a holiday booked with Thomas Cook to Crete in October, booking it independently the cost of the holiday would have been a fair bit more than I am paying and like Aslemma if the hotel is one I am familiar with or one that receives decent reviews I can see me using more and more packages.

Many thanks for the responses from these members, for whom I have the greatest respect. I am pleased to note that it is not just me!

Could it possibly be that a few years of financial insecurity and hardship has caused the TOs to pass on some of the benefit of their preferential rates as opposed to "rack rates"? Could it be that "loyalty" schemes are designed purely to massage the ego and invite you back? Could it be that flight "consolidators" are passing on the benefits to other companies, rather than trying to keep them to their own select group? Could it be that modern advances are allowing more "dynamic" pricing, rather than "Our prices are based on the exchange rate prevailing at dd mmm yy"?

Or could it be that there is genuine competition out there and at last we are genuinely seeing the benefit of a "market" economy?

As there are fewer companies in this market, this may at first seem strange. As there are fewer European travelers out there, perhaps not!

Whatever the reason, now that we have retired and therefore have less disposable income, we will make the most of it!



Peter