It’s possible to haggle already cheap package holiday late deals by a further 10%. One MoneySaver who "had no idea this’d work" reports £600 off a Crete holiday, just by calling three travel agents.
This step-by-step guide shows you when to book, where to go and how to haggle.
Travel Money Checklist
Package vs DIY holidays
The first thing to decide is whether a package holiday is right for you, or if you would get a better deal booking a DIY flight and hotel online.
A package holiday is an all-in-one, where the tour operator provides flights, connections and accommodation for one price. That means they're off-the-peg and best suited for standard breaks of standard length. So ...
As a rough rule of thumb, packages are usually cheapest for seven, 10 or 14 days away in a traditional holiday destination.
If you're going away for a different trip length, to a less visited spot, on a city break, or multi-stop holiday,
you'll tend to be better off with a DIY break. Read the Cheap Flights and Cheap Hotel guides, as well as the Hotel Sales deals note, for more on those.
The other package holiday bonus is they usually have added ATOL and ABTA consumer protection (though always check when you book - read more below: ATOL cover).
This means if the holiday company fails, either you'll be given a refund or, if you're away, can complete your trip.
With DIY holidays, if one of the components fails, you're unlikely to get your money back, unless the transaction was over £100 and you paid by credit card (read a full guide to Section 75 Refunds).
It's all about when you book
When it comes to timing your package holiday booking, there's one thing to remember:
The later you book, the cheaper, but this means limited choice. If you can't book late, book as early as possible.
The later the better ...
Booking late is the cheapest way to get a package. Later means no more than EIGHT to TEN WEEKS before departure; then the bargains flood in.
The reason's simple: tour operators have chartered the planes and reserved the rooms, and, if they don't shift 'em, they lose money. The later you leave it, the more desperate they are to flog empty rooms, so the price drops further.
Yet the later you wait, the more you need flexibility about dates and destinations. So if crèche facilities or a specific hotel are a must, be careful.
If you just want anywhere hot and cheap, leave it very late, ie, the week before you go, and you may get elegant trips for dirt-cheap prices.
Or the earlier the better ...
The other way to get discounts, though not as big, is to book early, as much as NINE MONTHS in advance, because many tour operators offer early booking brochure discounts. These can include £100 per couple discounts or buy-one-get-one-free weeks. Such sales help them match supply to demand more easily.
Location and timing are crucial
Take a holiday when others can't, such as before school holidays in May and June to family destinations like Florida, and you'll get a better price.
The same's true if you venture to once en vogue mass destinations that are no longer chic, where hotel capacity is unquenched by off-the-boil demand, or areas where some would worry, possibly unnecessarily, such as Israel's Eilat, hot all year round and reasonably far from most of the troubles.
Top tips for summer 2011
For the past few years many of us have shunned eurozone destinations and flocked to cheaper non-euro countries. Yet the happy combo of a weaker euro and falling resort prices (as travel firms compete for business) means countries like Spain and Portugal are mega-cheap again. Here are a few ways to keep it cheap this year ...
- Find countries where your pound buys more
The 2011 Post Office Holiday Costs Barometer found that Portugal, Spain, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria are the best value short-haul destinations. In fact, Spanish prices at are a three-year low. Italy and France will hit the wallet hardest.
It’s also worth noting that not all eurozone countries offer the same value for money. The Post Office’s survey put Portugal as the cheapest, but Italy and France are still some of the world's most costly.
For long haul, the most cost-effective spots are Sri Lanka, Thailand and Mexico. Among the priciest are the Australia, USA and Egypt. For more, read the full Post Office Holiday Costs report. - Be an inny, not an outy
If you're going abroad, the real cost is when you get there. Eating out is likely to be a big hit, especially if you're hitting pricey countries like France or Italy, so either consider full-board or all-inclusive. Alternatively, self-cater, and pop to the local supermarket. - Don't book excursions through your tour operator
Avoid booking activities through through your holiday rep, as guests are a captive market, so mark-ups can be massive. Venture elsewhere, however, and prices are competitive.
Compare local tour companies' costs once you get there - often half the price - and take along your own food and drink.
Tesco shoppers who've stored up their Clubcard points have another way to get ultra-cheap European attraction tickets. Spend Tesco Clubcard vouchers on goods or services listed in its Rewards brochure, and you get back up to three times their face value.
For example, deals in the brochure include France’s Asterix theme parks. Parc Asterix adult entry costs £31 on the door, but £13 in Reward vouchers. Full info in the Loyalty Points Boosting guide. - Compare transfer prices
While tour operators' transfers are often competively priced, you can beat them. Cheap 'n' cheeful transfer company ResortHoppa* has coach fares from £5 each/way. It may mean a longer wait and slower journey, but is well worth considering if you're on a tight budget.
Haggle down the cost of your holiday
The most important thing to understand before haggling is ...
Tour operators make holidays, travel agents sell them!
Admittedly, they're often both subsidiaries of the same company, yet the distinction is crucial. That's because, just like a Kylie CD is available at different shops at different prices, many different travel agents will try to sell the same tour operator's holiday at different prices.
This is the HEART of the haggling system. The aim's to find the travel agent who'll sell it you for the least. While this system works best for late deals from major tour operators, if you're booking early at a high street travel agents, it's still possible to lop £100s off the price by haggling.
Step One: Pick your perfect holiday
The aim's to locate a suitable holiday and grab all the details. Do ensure it's within your budget. A holiday you spend the rest of the year worrying how to pay for isn't relaxing (try the free Budget Planner for help).
You can benchmark a decent price on the web
To get an idea of the type of price you should be paying, use the web, though grabbing brochures for likely destinations helps too. Use review site TripAdvisor* to check out hotels.
Also check Weather2travel, which charts average weather conditions for different countries to see whether your destination will be sunny or soggy.
There are a growing number of package holiday sites:
TravelSupermarket: A broad selection of holidays.
While its functionality is straightforward, TravelSupermarket* covers a wide range of holidays. If you're flexible, just leave the 'going to' box blank, and it generates bargain basement suggestions.
Plus you can filter the list of brokers, so if you find one agent only sells holidays it's put together itself, not genuine tour operator hols, you can filter it out (see Check its a genuine package for more on this).
Teletextholidays.co.uk: Widest mainstream range.
The site linked to the TV pages, Teletextholidays.co.uk is a good place to get inspired, and very useful, as Teletext plays a hefty part in the haggling process later on.
For long haul suggestions, just click 'exotic bestsellers' and it throws up bargain hols in Asia and the Caribbean.
Icelolly.com: If you've no clue where to go.
For a starting point, you won't go far wrong with Icelolly.com. Enter your travel details, and it searches all the eligible holidays.
If you don't have a specific place in mind, leave the destination blank and it comes up with uber-cheap deals. It's not as strong as the others for long-haul destinations though.
While the web's great for getting a price, you can't haggle on it, so ultimately this is all about speaking to real travel agents, to get real prices and cut the price.
For this, Teletextholidays.co.uk is great, simply because, search for a place and it lists cheap holiday travel agents for that region. Yet don't believe an advert if it mentions a holiday; you must call and check it's actually available.
It's also worth heading down to high street travel agents to see if they'll cut you a deal, especially if you're booking early. The Sunday newspapers often list discount travel agents, and you can try the web, using multi-agent sites such as Icelolly.
Once you've found a holiday you want, within your price range, ensure you write down as much info as you can.
That means tour operator details, flight times, hotel destination (or minimum star if it's allocation on arrival), whether transfers, meals and plane meals are included – everything you can get. Though don't spend too long on the phone to the original travel agent. It's unlikely you'll actually book through them.
Warning! Check it's a genuine package
Brokers sell two types of trip. First there’s the traditional package, where flights, transfers and hotels are all booked with one tour operator, eg, Thomas Cook or Thomson.
Then there are holidays which the agent puts together, with separate flights (often Ryanair or Easyjet), hotels and transfers. Giveaway words are ‘dynamic’, ‘tailormade’ and ‘pyramid’ hols.
While agents call these packages, often they aren’t. Not all dynamic packages are ATOL protected, ie, if your airline goes bust, you could get stranded. If you are covered, you will get a 'ATOL receipt' - read more on the Foreign Office website.
Plus if it’s a budget airline, such as Ryanair, you can get stung with luggage and other fees. In this case, you’d be better of booking your flights and hotel yourself to see the fees clearly and maybe beat the price (see Cheap Hotels & Cheap Flights).
Good questions to ask a broker: “Is there a tour operator, or is this a dynamic package?”, “Is this holiday ATOL protected?” and “What happens if my flight is cancelled?”
Step Two: Haggle down your holiday price
Now the holiday's picked, it's a game to get EXACTLY THE SAME holiday cheaper and here my Teletextholidays bias becomes clear. However it's worth remembering to stay polite, charming and smiley throughout this, as
I'm going through the process as I write, though tragically it's only for the sake of research. My destination is a week's self-catering in Barbados, at a three star hotel, for two, leaving in two week's time.
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Use the Teletext location lists to find agents
This is the reason for my teletext bias, as you can simply search its site and scan for phone numbers of all your destination's specialist holiday companies. Also try TravelSupermarket* and IceLolly, as they list brokers too. Act quickly, as prices and availability change.
The Teletext advertised price was £570 per person, compared to a brochure price of £786pp. After calling, the other costs brought it to £593 including booking fee, transfers and plane meals. These supposed 'extras' are almost always split out with late bookings, so always check. - Call and ask if it can beat the quote you have
Just pick one up, and politely with charm, tell it you've been quoted a holiday price, give it the details and ask if it can beat the price. Try to negotiate in price per PERSON, not total cost, as discounts seem less to them.
My price was £593, so I quoted £585 and it came back with £570. - Then continue the process with a few more
Now call a few more, quoting the best price you've got and see who can beat it. To speed up the process, you could knock around a tenner off your existing price before you haggle, but don't go too far with this, as the agent will often ask for the name of the rival outfit.
Quickly repeating this process with three others, the price soon dropped to £523 per person. After that no one else would budge. Still, so far that's a saving of £140 for two, with just a few phone calls. - Call the tour operator directly
Once you've hit the price floor, to be absolutely sure, call the tour operator's own direct booking arm; Thomas Cook*, Cosmos*, First Choice* and Virgin* all have them.
At this point, I called the tour operator offering the holiday, but I'd obviously shaved cost down to the bone already, as they would only match, not beat, my price of £523. - Give the first broker the chance to match it
Finally, just to try and be fair, if a travel agent spent a lot of time with you to find the
holiday in the first place, why not give it the chance to match - not beat - the price to regain your custom.
Compared with the brochure price at £1572 for two, it was a saving of £526 for two on the original price. And this is on a relatively cheap holiday; the more expensive the trip, the bigger the savings.
See below for more examples.
How much will you save?
Many people have tried this technique with varying degrees of success. Here are some quotes from the forum:
Recently we booked a holiday for a family of four to Florida. Initial quotes were in the region of £5,000 to £6,000 for chartered flights, accommodation and car hire. By employing the haggling technique, we managed to get the final price down to just over £2,000 all-in! - MoneySaver2
I have just saved myself over £600 on a holiday to Crete. I had no idea it would work, but I got three quotes from three advertisers on the Teletext ads. I am so happy to have got all this money off! - Shughesnerys
I just followed the tips on haggling down the price of our holiday and managed to save £460 per person on our next cruise. It works, just give it a try! - Clutterbux
Be aware that travel agents don't like this
A few years ago I (Martin) presented an ITV1 Tonight programme on this technique, taking a couple of families and showing how much they could save by haggling.
Travel agents vented their spleen, letters were sent and the trade magazine devoted pages to it. Apparently showing people how to cut their costs is ‘immoral' and I have devil horns. Read their views and my response and my later blog Martin Lewis turns down travel agents’ invitation” – Is that news?.
The aim seems to be to persuade me that travel agents have it tough. I don’t really need persuading; I’m pretty sure in the current climate some agents – like those in many other industries – are having difficulties, and I wish them all the best.
Yet that isn’t enough of a reason for us to hide the fact that haggling with travel agents results in consumers paying less; this is a site for consumers after all.
To be fair to travel agents, try to minimise the amount of their time you use when originally sourcing the holiday you want, if you're going to buy it cheaper elsewhere anyway. It's one of the reasons I favour phone specialists who deal with this all the time, rather than walking into an agency.
Glossary
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