I do both . Whatever way I get the best deal . For the last few years we have holidayed in Turkey and Egypt 2 holidays a year . So out of my last 6 holidays 2 have been DIY and 4 have been packages booked very early that I couldnt beat DIY . These are A/I holidays for a family of 5 with 4/5 of those being adult price and during school holidays .

lyn

I agree with Lyn. I dont think it pays to be fixed in your thinking. Everytime you go on holiday you need to price things both ways and work out what is best. Also it isnt always about price, yet another small private company went bust yesterday (ScotTravel who specialise in Turkey, they have left 1,500 people over there) Sometimes if is only a little more being covered by the package holiday regs is worth it's weight in gold.

Totally agree there Chris . With the way things are at the moment I wouldnt be happy about booking a DIY a year in advance unless I was booking flights with one of the big T/Os i.e Thomsons or TC and booking accomodation either direct with the hotel or again one of the accomodation only websites owned by one of the main T/O's .

Another consideration is booking DIY often means shelling out the cost of your holiday at the time of booking unless you can find a deposit only deal at the time or book direct with hotel .The cost of Flight only bookings are more often that not due at the time of booking. With our holidays now coming in bordering 4K that is not easy to find and neither would i be happy handing over that sort of money over a year in advance . Package deals will normally come with a low deposit offer if you book early .

I also agree - but you see people posting on here moaning about the major travel firms and what they charge and how they would only ever go DIY!!

I too have done both in the past however I have found that over the last couple of years I have got really good deals on package holidays and not had the hassle of trying to arrange everything myself.

Sorry when I said "what gives you the best value" I did mean overall - money, protection, time etc

A friend of ours was going with Scot Travel - dunno what they are going to do now!!

I'd forgotten about that as well Lyn. Sometimes I am just not in a position to let a flight company sit on a thousand pounds or so of my money for in excess of 12 months. Its not so bad with Spain, Portugal etc where if you get lucky you can pick up flight for a song, but with Turkey, Greece, Egypt where you are in the air for a lot longer and so the flights cost more it can be difficult. Depends on the cash flow really. (or lack of it ).

Pity XL went under as they often had offers where they took just a deposit on flight only bookings, although maybe that contributed to their massive problems.

So sorry to hear about your friend and ScotTravel zoso.

I read on another forum of someone who was going with Freedom Direct and they went under and rebooked with ScotTravel talk about bad luck.

i also agree with chris and lyn , we do both, although i have found im tending to do more diy now , but i always price up both, way it up and have a good look around before booking. certainly the city breaks i do work out a fair bit cheaper doing it diy, ive just come back from istanbul and did that diy and saved loads, next 2 hols ive got booked are also diy for july and oct.

ive got 2 wks in oct inc half term staying at lykia for the first week and olu deniz resort for 6 days at £1350 which i think for 3 people is excellent, my friend is paying £1200 for the lykia world for the same week for 3 of them on a package, so for an extra £150 ive got an extra week all inclusive ,£50 pp lol . so theres a perfect comparison , the only difference being ive got to pay for transfers which work out around £75 return to be added on, but still i think ive come out better lol, unless all the companies go burst

Like a lot of you I do both - and having four children I have come to realise that there is not really such a thing as a free child place - because they get you on the under occupancy fees - whereas if you book an apartment through Alpharooms for example - you are paying for the apartment only, not the number of people in it!

Sometimes I have saved literally half on a holiday - for example this year to Majorca it would have cost twice as much doing a package than the DIY we have done.

But then again Ive seen cheap packages and tried to do the same sort of thing DIY and its been more expensive.

BUT for us its not JUST the money thats the reason I MUCH prefer DIY - its the freedom of having literally hundreds of apartments and villas to choose from - once youve got your flights booked the world's your lobster - you can book accommodation as cheap or as upmarket as you like - whereas in a package brochure youve a choice of about three or four hotels in a resort - and its much more fun for us as a family browings through Alpharooms and pricing what we want!

I do both depending on what works out the best. If holidaying in Europe it's always DIY booking the accommodation either direct with hotel, apartments or villa owner.

Not been able to do a DIY to the caribbean as cheap as a package, even booking direct with the hotel. Not saying it can't be done just not for where we want to stay.

I have worked in the holiday industry for many years and never book accommodation through a supplier. Have had to sort out too many complaints.

Tend to use tour ops for late deal villas on short haul deals in the summer. Work out cheaper than DIY.

In the winter tend to DIY our trips to Far East, as usually its cheaper and secondly tend to go to hotels that don't feature in British tour op brochures.

Like everyone else who has posted, I have done both. It really does depend on what type of holiday you are looking for. When we went to Hong Kong/Australia/Singapore earlier this year it was far too complicated to do it myself. Too many stopovers, transfers, hotels and car hire would have given me a real headache. I would have liked to have done it diy, but I think we had to be realistic in the amount of travelling we were doing. Having said that, we went to USA 3 years ago, visiting New York, Washington and Boston and did it all diy with no problems.

Rosalyn

I wish I had the courage to do DIY, I have only ever done package, I am a born worrier and would constantly worry about everything being ok or if I'd forgotton something. I know things can go wrong with booking with Thomson or whoever else, but at least they would have to 'own' the problem. I know there are savings to be made by DIY friends of mine have saved quite a bit, going to the States and other long haul destinations on DIY, but me I just need peace of mind and let someone do the worrying.

I've done both, although I mainly book DIY. Main reason is flexibility (flight days and times) and freedom of choice of location, but price is a good-sized factor too. I have had most of my cheapest holidays DIY, but have had the odd cheap package deal too. My worst holiday in all respects was a package, but partly my fault I guess for only knowing the island in terms of location! It often takes many hours of research to work it all out, so it's time-consuming to DIY it very often.

We have done DIY, but at the moment I would prefer to do a package holiday.

I was going to pluck up the courage to try DIY, but with so much going wrong in the travel industry decided once again to play safe and go with the Tour Ops, it's worth it for peace of mind. We do organise things ourselves if we are driving over to Europe, but it always seems much more risky when flights are involved.

Pam

We usually do DIY now but we have done packages too. If you can get a good deal with flights then it definitely worth going DIY as you can get accomodation pretty cheap by booking direct. However once the flight prices go up it can sometimes be better to book a package. We managed to get a package for £560 for two adults and two children for two weeks last year so that was too good a bargain to miss, there was no way we could have done that DIY.

This year we got a good price for our flight seats and all the accomodation we have looked at is a good price too and I haven't seen any packages that come anywhere near for the same places, they work out neary twice the price in some cases

Done 3 diy holidays since November 2008 and when I priced them with Tour operators I was saving around £200 per person per holiday these were for 2 weeks on all 3 occasions.