Financial & Travel Musings

Levels of business are notoriously difficult to predict in the travel business but this year at least everyone seemed to agree that it was going to be a tough year and so it has turned out.

That’s left those that booked their holidays well in advance with a dilema. Do they keep their existing hotel reservations booked at often what seem quite high levels when compared with what’s available now. Or, do they cancel and rebook? What we’ve found is that a lot of them simply aren’t turning up and presumably taking up a cheaper offer elsewhere.

However, that’s hitting many of them with cancellation charges which they may well not even think about until they get back home and see all those charges on their credit card bills. What many people forget is that when a hotel room is guaranteed with a credit card, the hotel will charge for the first night unless it’s cancelled in advance.

So if you’re thinking of rebooking, don’t forget to cancel the original reservations or you could find that your “cheaper” option turns out to be rather expensive.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Although many of us would like to take a cruise holiday of some kind hardly anyone really puts any thought into what would make it an ideal trip for them.

That’s a shame really as there are so many cruise trips on offer these days that it’s easy to pick the “wrong” one when you could equally easily have the one that was just perfect for you. But what would make it perfect?

For me it would need to be a cruise that included stops in a lot of different places. So, no long cross Atlantic cruises for me. Instead my ideal is probably something along the lines of some of the Caribbean cruises. There you’ve got the chance to have a selection of different islands even on the shortest of trips and with something more than a couple of weeks long you’ve an enormous range of choice.

However, there’s also the business of what to do on board. It takes a while to travel between ports even in the Caribbean so you want decent accommodation, a good variety of entertainment and a wide selection of meals. After all, aside from it being a cruise the boat is going to be your holiday resort for a good part of the time too.

Finally, there’s the price or rather the value for money aspect. Sure, you can go to the five star end of things with your room, but I think it’s better to have a cruise company that allocates the largest proportion of your money to things outside the room.

Popularity: 15% [?]

As the motorhome owners amongst you will know, it’s not so simple to get appropriate insurance for a motorhome.

That’s down to the sheer complexities of motorhome insurance or rather of motorhome usage. Whilst nobody really likes insurance companies at least in the case of insuring a motorhome most people can appreciate the problems that they have with these policies. After all, car insurance is complicated enough but add in the fact that you’re carting your home and valuables around with you in a big lump of a vehicle and probably travelling abroad with it too and you start to appreciate the fact that complications can easily arise. Even at the simplest level you’ve vehicle insurance plus property insurance plus contents insurance all rolled into one and then with the overseas element added into the mix.

Something of a nightmare to sort out adequately but obvious quite important given the sheer number of things that could go wrong along the way.

Popularity: 29% [?]