Financial & Travel Musings » Holidays/Vacations

Putting a little away for the holidays

Arnold — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:32:09 +0000

One of the handy things about the pre-paid currency cards is that you can use them as a savings account for your holidays and average out the exchange rate at the same time.

Thus, we’ve been putting £50 in the Post Office travel money card fairly regularly over the last few months with a view to using it to pay for our holiday in due course. Granted, I’m not getting the very best exchange rate at any given time doing this but what it does let me do is to pop £50 in and average out the exchange rate that I’m getting. That’s effectively taking the exchange rate risk out of the equation for me at very little additional cost.

Somewhat more economical on the exchange rate front would be FairFX which lets you put in small amounts too but I find that popping it into the Post Office is handier.

Is there EVER going to be an end to the volcano flight cancellations?

Arnold — Mon, 17 May 2010 10:14:26 +0000

It seems like every week there are another batch of airport closures due to the Icelandic volcano.

It’s so common now that it’s hardly even mentioned on the news and it looks like the only way to know for sure whether your flight is on is to call the airport. Even then, the other week that didn’t even work as some airports listed as closed had flights during at least part of the day.

There neither seems to be an end in sight of this nor does there seem to be any move towards consistency in reporting what’s happening. If it were anything else, you’d have seen a website set up to collect together all the information but that hasn’t happened yet, probably because a) it continually looks like it might be over soon and b) nobody seems to have the full picture of closures.

The only clear certainty in all this is that it would be crazy to even think about any holiday this summer that involved flying anywhere.

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Dreams of Florida

Arnold — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:49:27 +0000

We’re in the midst of selling our French property and planning major florida vacations as a celebration of the day we receive the cheque.

The only problem is that the sale is taking so darned long that I think the kids have given up hope of ever getting to Disneyworld. Not that it’s stopped them nagging us about it, of course!

Planning has even went so far as us getting one of those US$ prepaid cards for the initial expenses whilst we’re there. At the rate the sale is progressing though it’s likely to have expired before we get there

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Problems with Orlando vacations

Arnold — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:34:10 +0000

Actually, there’s usually only one problem with orlando vacations and that’s simply that there’s just too much choice in terms of the activities available.

It’s an unusual problem in that most holiday destinations have a fairly tight focus on activities thus if you’re at a normal beach resort place there are, by and large, just beach type activities to do. In the Orlando area though there’s no such tight focus and you’ll find everything from the beach activities, through wilderness spots to the many theme parks dotted around the area.

You might think that too much choice isn’t a problem but it unless you’re going on holiday by yourself. Try it with a family and you can easily find that everyone wants to go somewhere different. Thus, unless your vacation time and budget is unlimited you’re best to plan out where you’ll be going in advance and avoid arguments about the selection of places when you get there.

Are people really that price sensitive in their holidays these days?

Arnold — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:34:00 +0000

You’d think in these fairly dire economic days that people would be keeping close track of their holiday spending but in reality that’s not always what they do.

Just to give you an idea of how insensitive people generally are to holiday pricing, consider that a couple of years ago we accidently entered our prices in euros on one system when they were being processed in pounds on that system. The effect of that was to raise our prices by around 40% for about a month before we realised our mistake. You might think that doing so would have drastically reduced the bookings but in fact they were at pretty much the same level as they’d been the year before and the only real effect was that we made more money.

Even now, when we sometimes experiment with large drops in price over periods when we’ve not too many bookings. The overall effect is barely noticeable.

So overall people aren’t really that sensitive to price changes, even now. However, what low upfront pricing does is to bring us to the top of the searches in our area so those low prices get people to look at us but they generally book a more expensive room.

So what’s an ideal cruise vacation consist of?

Arnold — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:59:03 +0000

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.

Insuring your motorhome

Arnold — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:41:32 +0000

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.

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insuring a motorhome

Las Vegas niche hotels

Arnold — Sun, 17 May 2009 09:04:31 +0000

Las Vegas is very much the land of niche hotels. Whereas in other places, it’s the location of the hotel that’s the most important factor in deciding upon a particular hotel, in Las Vegas it’s the attractions of the hotel itself that generally make the decision as to where to stay.

Thus you have a very wide range of differing entertainment mixes open to you depending on which hotel you go for. The most famous is probably Caesar’s Palace is probably the most famous but that’s only because it’s been around so long and more modern s like the resorts like the Stratosphere hotel are always fighting hard to attract your business so the entertainment options on offer can often be stronger than in the more established hotels.

The choice is truly massive with many aiming to attract the family market these days and thus having all kinds of things specifically for the kids whilst others aim at couples or golfing or whatever. That’s not to say that you can’t stay at one place and take in the entertainment at another because that’s exactly what many people do.

The changing RV seasons

Arnold — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:53:40 +0000

I’ve been on quite a lot of rv holidays over the years and one thing that’s always quite striking is just how different they are considered in different countries and in different seasons.

For example, typically you’ll see the RV photos featuring the wide-open roads of the western half of America with not another soul in sight. Certainly, that’s a common use for motorhomes as any of us who’ve travelled around the “wild west” during summer would attest but it’s far from the only place you’ll spot them.

Very common apparently on the east coast are the older generation of RV travellers who can often be seen in mobile villages as they move around various campsites in large groups. Many’s a campsite can appear to be a retirement home in the New England fall.

And then you get the more intrepid RVers who venture out into the real wilderness that makes up the centre of Australia. You quickly find that the warnings to carry enough fuel and water aren’t just for show. Even on the main highway you can find several hundred miles go by before you can refuel and for those that set off on the tracks with the beefier RV rigs you need to take extra fuel and water to see you through to the next bit of civilisation.

Finally, let’s not forget the complete nutcases who take 40 foot rigs into the centre of cities! Whilst we found it hard enough navigating Chicago with a 25 footer (medium size in America, large in Australia), we saw one crazy person parking (rather better than I do my car!) a 40 footer right beside the water tower in the centre of the city.

Holidays afloat

Holiday time in Carolina

Arnold — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:08:25 +0000

As we edge out of the winter season, we’re just getting into the peak time for vacation bookings for the coming summer.

One of the apparently more popular areas these days are in Carolinas outer banks. Ordinarily most people only consider hotels for their vacations but Outer Banks rentals are definitely the way to go in this instance. Why? Well, this is an area where you will make the most of the attractions by having a base for your explorations and there are some fantastic holiday rental properties available right now at reasonably sensible prices too.

Although you might think that with the current economic situation, there’s no rush to make your reservations, don’t rely on that because people tend to put vacation expenditure right at the top of their priorities so these properties will go fast.