Try checking the accommodation only sites for the hotel as they are often cheaper than booking direct with the hotel.

I have booked a 4* hotel in Benidorm for £33pppn. Booking direct with the hotel would cost €95, approx £68 which is more than double.

luci

Thanks Luci, but I have already done that and Winter Sunshine who last year were £100 dearer than H10 direct with whom I booked,do compare favourably this year but the price has increased by at least £200 over their 2006 price.

Dave

Have you tried Travel Republic? I found them to be £100-150 cheaper than any of the other sites for my hotel.

luci

Another good site ; Findmeaccom.com



Who is cheapest often varies between hotels & sites & times of year you are booking. Always pays to look at as many sites as you have time to.

Roomsnet are quite good for the US and Spain too.

Thanks for your replies Ladies,

Winter Sunshine and Travel Republic are the same price both with discount at £522, Findmeaccom are £20 dearer with no discount.

I have always found it hard to beat winter sunshine with their loyalty discount but did use Travel Republic once with a promo, evidently the latest promo for them is Cardstudent which was on another thread.

Dave

Dave . Have you tried travel republic using the promo code "Card student".

sorry i am dumb this morning .i should read properly . must get my brain in gear before posting

Findmeaccom.com will normally price beat if you ring them (but not by much !)

Broadway Travel are sometimes worth a look.

Hope you get sorted soon

I've done quite an amount of homework on cheap (but quality) holidays. Hotels offer deals only when it suits them. The Travel companies (Falcon etc) wait until the last minute and offer good deals in May, early June, latter half of September etc.

The (loudest) secret is :-
1. Book flights months in advance (Ryanair are excellent on low cost)
2. Book good private apartment with everything you want like sea views, pool views, proximity to restaurants, distance to airport, number of bedrooms etc There are hundreds of websites.

You cannot lose if this is done correctly. Saving a few bob alternating between Falcon and Thomson is only causing stress.

Why have bread when you can have cake?

I would say that I would have to agree with you on some websites, however you maybe able to find a good accomodation only website or a travel agent. There is enough demand to satisfy hoteliers at the moment with cheap flights causing a surge in demand.

I agree on booking flights far in advance, try SkyScanner for finding cheap flights, I have found it to be great.

Hi ya all ;
I am not looking for information or looking for sites , I spend a lot of time on here searching for value , whilst I appreciate your comments there are not many sites that I have not visited , my original question was did other posters find that DIY is getting more expensive ?, I have holidayed for some years now under my own steam, so am not completely new. However i do appreicate your replies and I thank you very much,

Dave

Don't think d.i.y. is neccessarily becoming more expensive,Dave,but I do think the bargains are becoming harder to find because of the increased popularity of self-assembled holidays.The two or three 'days of grace' between the publishing of airline fares and the disappearance of the cheapest fares, has now been condensed to about two hours.
Likewise,there seem to be less and less hotels (certainly in Portugal,at least,) that don't have rates that are not dictated by U.K. online room-booking agencies. A small,family-run hotel that we use regularly on the Algarve, signed up last year with a little heard-of online agency and their rates virtually doubled overnight, as a condition of their contract stipulated the minimum rate the hotel was able to quote.
On the other hand,however,I find that the private transfers market has become much more competetive with the growth of d.i.y. holidaymakers ( but don't worry - I'm sure that,as I speak, some junior executive from an agency in good old rip-off U.K. is working on a plan to inflate the taxi prices and cream off more of our hard-earned !! )

Dave

Everything is becoming more expensive and obviously holidays follow suit. But, you cut your cloth to suit your measure.

DIY can be worked to your advantage. More and more people are buying abroad and most of them need tenants to defray costs. These Holiday Home owners don't want to spend on continuous advertising and want to offload early. [Primarily, these people buy for investment, their own family holidays, retirement etc - I know, I am one]. Even an empty apartment costs money.

My advice again:- Book your apartment/villa as early as possible (even a year in advance).

Watch the low cost airlines, book early, be aware of their special sales. Sometimes fares are so low it might be worth your while to 'snap up' several flights and months later if one does not suit, don't travel. Low cost airlines are all about bums on seats.

Bear in mind transfer costs at your destination also and it might be cheaper and more prudent to rent a car.

Think of your departure from home - must you drive to the airport and leave your car there? Can you leave your car securely elsewhere and take a taxi/train/coach/bus to the airport?

With a little homework you can have extra holidays in the year. Remember 50% of all holidays booked in the UK are private deals with Holiday Home Owners.

I think it is definitely becoming more expensive....though the package market in comparison, is now becoming more competative (I suppose its had to), so its not always a clear case of saving money through DIY anymore.

The true budget airlines aside, I've noticed companies such as XL.com who once were very competative on their Med flights, have definitely uped their prices in the last 2 years, even allowing for rises in APD.
And though there seems to have been a large increase in the number of accommodation only providers, the added competition does not seem to have resulted in reductions in hotel prices

Yes, bargains are harder to find, and they are just as likely to be found in the package market as the DIY, so I now find myself having to keep an eye on both markets when looking to book a holiday.

I agree as well, it seems to be getting more expensive. The cheap flights go within about 2 hours of being released rather than 2 or three days.

But I also think the prices on the accommodation only websites are going up and I have only just started doing DIY. Trust me to get in on the act when the good times are on the wain.

I actually found some of the accommodation only prices for the Algarve quite high and you had to be very selective to get a good deal.

I agree although I have only been on one DIY holiday and that was this year to Egypt but for next year I couldnt get anywhere near the package price for DIY because the flights that we got cheap last year from XL had gone up around £100 each for the same time next year. watch this space for next summer tho now I have got my cheap turkey flights. As we are a family of 5 that has to pay 4 adult prices potentially the saving should be good . I also think it is probably much easier to get a decent DIY saving if one of the true budget airlines do flights to your favoured destination. We need the likes of easyjet and Ryanair to go that little further in their travels

It doesn't always work out cheaper to book flights early as it depends on what competition there is on the route. From Stansted to Monastir there is only one airline, used by both Airtours and Panorama, and I could fly tomorrow for £138, but on 16th September it would cost £279. For accommodation the prices seem to change from day to day at present. For the dates I want in October Travel Republic are asking £247, Lowcostbeds £161 and Alpharooms £254 for the same hotel and board.

We found it cheaper to book a package holiday this year as the the flight prices did not drop.

Did Corfu (roda)1st two weeks of June with Olympic holidays for £702 for 3 adults and 1child for two weeks s/c

Hi. Never tried diy hols before - the simple reason I like to book well in advance. Is it possible to book flights 11-12 months in advance?
If so, can anyone recommend a website to search for flights. We are limited to flying from Cardiff or Bristol. Also, we can only travel during school hols as my sister and I both work in a school. We've found in the past that by the time we've priced a flight for Aug and added the accom to it and transfer that we're financially better off with a package deal.
Does anyone beg to differ. Any suggestions most welcome.
Thanks

Hi Shirley,

just wanted to say that with the budget airlines you should be able to do quite a cheap DIY in the school hols. If its only for 2 of you per room then you might not find much of a saving but for families it can work out much cheaper. Cheap flights is the key though.

Ryanair have announced lots of routes from Bristol next year and Easyjet have announced new routes to Madeira and Lisbon. The choice is now great from Bristol.