I must admit I tend to use Thomson/First choice, do be honest I don't even bother getting other t/o brochures, as I know I will always use Thomson.

I would never be loyal to one TO unless they were running a holiday to where I wanted to go and were giving the best deal.

I now go DIY for most of my holidays and for the rest I use specialist independents depending on destination and type of holiday I'm after. The last time I used one of the big package TOs was over 7 years ago and only because at the time they were offering such good deals to Tunisia that it was impossible to put a better deal together myself. I think that this was because bookings for Muslim countries post 9/11 possibly dropped really heavily and they needed to off load rooms and flights that they were already contracted for.

SM

Whoevers the cheapest
I will search all options DIY, tour op. and then decide. This year TC had a holiday identical to Thomson but it was £200 cheaper, guess who I booked with

always shop around, we went with Thomas Cook this year for the first time, incident free so they'll be considered again.:think

But only if the price is right..

we surf the net to whats about that we might fancy then start looking for the best deal [not the cheapest price]
best deal for us is Morning flights from a reasonably close airport with a 20 kg hold allowance
a hotel that meets our requirements for that particular holiday
located in a country/resort we want to go to ..

for the past 4 yrs we have used a mixture of Thomson [i prefer to deal with the Preston shop by phone]
A1 Travel or Fleetway all well established and reasonably Honorable as tour operator/travel agents go

this year we have purchased 1 holiday from Thomson [an Olympic holiday ] and 2 from flreetway last year it was 2 from A1 and 2 from Thomson year before was 1 from A1 one from fleetway and 2 from Thomson

If the flight times suit I tend to go with Thomson as I have never had a bad holiday with them. The hotel I go to in Ibiza is block booked by Thomson/Portland and generally they have a good range of hotels. Having said that I have used First Choice and Thomas Cook in Greece and Turkey and have been happy with both. Have had several flight only holidays with Thomson also so I suppose I am a satisfied customer of theirs!

used to be flexible until we had 18hr delay with thomas cook.we are still flexible,but no more thomas cook.this year,thomson & monarch.
percy123.

I have just ventured away from DIY for next year as it's Cyprus and the packages were coming out as a better option.

I am not loyal to anyone and price makes or breaks the booking. I am very specific about the accomodation though and will only ever do decent daytime flight times.

I normally use the Co-op Travel shop in Gloucester as the customer service is excellent, however I used TUI this time but sadly it seemed they just wanted the sale without giving the customer service i'm used to When you are spending £2000 you expect the person dealing with you to at least look interested. .
Back to the Co-op next year I think.

Laurence

For our main holidays where the hotel is very important to us, we book with First Choice as it is one of the Premier hotels so we get extra baggage, pre booked seating etc. It is a very busy hotel and the smaller agencies haven't the same clout as FC so if they get overbooked, FC are the last Company they would upset. Friends of our booked flights and the hotel separately and had a phone call hours before they were leaving to say the hotel was full and they had to stay elsewhere.
They told them that they were only going to Spain to stay with us at that hotel and if they could not do that then they wanted to cancel and have their money refunded but the hotel agency said, 'no, because we are offering you an alternative.'
They were then sent to a hotel that they would never had chosen and we didn't spend the week together - we only saw them once!

We also go on short breaks where we choose the Country but don't mind so much where we stay so we usually book our flights with Easyjet and recently Thomson hotels which have been excellent and when you book with them, you are treated as if you have booked a package tour, i.e welcome meetings, assistance etc (but only if you want it!!)

We normally go with first choice as its our local agent and good customer service. think couple times weve not booked with them not had a problem with other agents. weve also used coop travel there good aswell and you get free coffee tea hot chocolate in our local one now

We used to book our holidays through First Choice, mainly because they had rooms at our favourite hotel in Goa and we never had problems with them. Unfortunately, they no longer feature that hotel so we are having to book either through Jewel in the Crown or go independently.

I look at price first but do stick with the bigger companies.

We have just had a fab week in Fueteventura booked with Thomas Cook, we were seconds away from booking exactly the same holiday on the First Choice web site when we thought we would just see if Thomas Cook went there, they did and we saved over £400 on the week and got much better flight times .

Never deal with tour operators any more - prefer to do it independently.

I always check out most of the big travel companies as prices can vary quite a lot for the same property, usually end up going with Thomson, have done for past 3 years and no complaints. We are going to Fuerteventura with Direct Holidays in October (school hols) as they came out the cheapest this time. I do not feel confident enough to use little known companies so always go with one of the "big ones"
M

I can't remember the last time we booked with a Tour operator - well I can remember the holiday but not the year -
I do know it was a long, long time ago.

Like SMA we always do DIY now - it's saved us an absolute fortune over the years.

We go with whoever's the cheapest. It doesn't mater whether its DIY or package. We do struggle to get good prices from our regional airports - Cardiff & Bristol.