DIY Convert

[wayneg]

So difficult, There are no rules in the travel industry, I almost always book flights when they are released 11 months out, and did just that for our next trip to Cali in 5 weeks £375 each + 2000 points I thought was a really good price, yesterday Virgin have a sale same flight £342 on general sale no points.
When we know our dates (nearly always 11 months in advance) I look for flights constantly 3,4,5 times a day on every website. A trick with Expedia is change times of flights you want to say outbound 2 am inbound 10pm instead of anytime. It gives different prices sometimes.
Be willing to from different airports or Indirect, We live in Yorkshire and would be willing to fly from any airport between Gatwick and Newcastle. check all sites you can find, Opodo, Airnet, Expedia etc, If near Glasgow Globespan do very good prices.
We are not fussy with hotel, stayed in some top hotels in the world been met at the door and my coat and cases taken to my room, turndown service and a chocolate on the pillow, the novelty has worn off its boring give me a £25 a night hotel any day with no fuss(thats probably the Yorkshire in me). Some people only enjoy WDW if staying onsite, we are the opposite, was not impressed with Allstars Movies.
There are so many sites for hotels you have to just do a search, BA have had some good deals recently, Hotelmartusa always seem to be good for BW lakeside. Alpharooms was best place to book HOJO in Anaheim, Travelocity was very good last Xmas when we wanted hotel last minute, lakeside was sold out on all websites but travelocity had 1 room available.
There is always an offer out there somewhere it's just finding it.

 

[Twilight Terror]

WOW! I'm not sure I have the time or the patience to be trying to complete everything like that. A small advantage to package holiday - you can sort everything out at once, and if anything does go wrong while you're out there, you know the exact people to go to!

 

[wayneg]

and if anything does go wrong while you're out there, you know the exact people to go to!

That is one of the reasons I would prefer not to use a tour operator again, We arrived Boxing day on a package, No car available, this holiday had been booked for over a year. It was Alamo, They put us in a taxi to Hotel which we had to pay for then claim back. after 24 hours I rang thay had a car ready for us, I went to collect car in another taxi (total $100 but they did refund), Tour op had sent us wrong docs, they wanted correct ones faxing before end of hol when we returned car, I had to leave credit card and sign to pay full amount of rental if correct docs were not faxed, Got in touch with tour op they said they would fax to my hotel, After $100 of phone calls to tour op and My travel agent back in UK end of holiday no fax. I was so mad, took car back, They had faxed the paper work to the car hire company not me, Did not enjoy the holiday as much as I should with all the hassle.
At least booking everything myself I know what docs I need.

 

[Red-Snapper]

I may find I am wrong here but one of the benefits I saw was that I booked direct with each supplier - therefore no middleman and (I hope) they treat me better as all the money is going to them.

If something does go wrong I am talking direct to the supplier not waiting for VH/Expedia/travel agent/etc to contact the supplier and sort things out.

 

[CHRIS F]

This October we are on a jetsave package as it was cheaper than diy, but our last three visits were all diy and we saved loads compared to using a package and we had better cars, tickets etc

Last time we went with another family they booked a virgin package direct for three weeks we did it ourselves, apart from indirect Delta flights compared to their direct VA, and we upgraded to a a 7 seater mini van which was about 4 upgrades, our holiday was £750 cheaper.

Always remember the biggest saving we made was xmas 2003 we had two weeks for £1500 staying at ASmo when virgin were quoting us £3000.

 

[feistyblue]

I can never make full DIY work out cheaper than buying hotels + flights + tickets from VH with the FC discount. I think that's because of flying PE though, PE and UC seats are so discounted through VH and due to only wanting to stay on-site. We don't do a full package with them though, we do their DIY packages instead because we want to split our stay between two resorts.

We always book the car separately though and do a lot of shopping around for that and will be applying various discount codes right up to departure.

I think if you are willing to fly economy and stay off-site you can get some amazing deals by booking it all yourself.

 

[Boo Boo Too]

I can never make full DIY work out cheaper than buying hotels + flights + tickets from VH with the FC discount. I think that's because of flying PE though, PE and UC seats are so discounted through VH and due to only wanting to stay on-site. We don't do a full package with them though, we do their DIY packages instead because we want to split our stay between two resorts.

I think if you are willing to fly economy and stay off-site you can get some amazing deals by booking it all yourself.

Not true, when we fly longhaul, we always go Business Class (normally BA now, but in the past quite a bit of VS/CO). Although, in general, I have become very adept at finding airline bargains and collecting and spending airmiles. Am also very fussy regarding in which hotels/villas I stay in.

Package holidays can never get near what I pay for what I get by going DIY... I actually think that the difference can actually be a lot more marked for the "luxury" end of the scale...

But it obviously varies.

Boo

 

[Red-Snapper]

Yeah - my price includes PE both ways. £400 cheaper than the VH price (with the FVC discount)

 

[feistyblue]

It must be the particular combination of VA PE, Disney hotels & the tickets that does it for me because each time I do spend hours checking it out DIY and in advance too.

Haven't been able to beat VH's package price for the Sandy Lane either. With the discount they just come out so much cheaper than DIY.

I think as long as you look at all the options, do all your calculations, get the flights, level of service and hotels you want, you're on to a winner. For non-Disney holidays ( except Barbados) we never buy a package holiday but for Disney it works best for us even though this time it's not a straight package.

 

[Fiona R]

I think it depends when you go, how far in advance you can book and the combination of people going. As a family of 5, all 3 children 10-16 so usually counting as adults, and nearly all tour operators will only book the five person rooms for up to 4, DIY means we are going at Christmas as opposed to not going. If I could have booked this time last year I may have got an OK quote through BA or Virgin, but this way I can chop and change Disney hotels (not the villa obviously, but then I know exactly which one we are going to!) until 5 days beforehand!! It's still not cheap but at least it's £3 000 less than package quotes.

 

[carolfoy]

The biggest 'secret' is just time - to be honest when I'm booking a holiday I spend hours looking through every operator and weighing up the prices of doing things seperately and doing things as a package, it works both ways, sometimes I'm DIY, sometimes I'm a package.

 

[Graeme]

I have become very adept at finding airline bargains and collecting and spending airmiles.
Boo

How do airmiles work and where do you collect them?. I've heard of them but never really bothered with them before.

 

[wayneg]

I only collect Virgin miles as its the airline we use most, registered at their website, sometimes we use them, sometimes its cheaper to just book regular prices, Xmas we have paid regular price as there was no availabilty for miles and money bookings. Next Easter school hols we used miles 2000 each +£291 each (about half price)
You need to look at their website to see all benefits, you can get free seats, free upgrades,
You can also sign up to their credit card and earn miles as you spend.
We even got 8,000 points each credited last month flying on BMI as they are alliance partners.
My brother has just gone on a free return trip to Las vegas today business class by using 100,000 miles.

 

[Boo Boo Too]

How do airmiles work and where do you collect them?. I've heard of them but never really bothered with them before.

wayneg posted a VERY good reply... so will just add how I collect/use them. I MAINLY use BA Airmiles, have some BMI Airmiles and have used quite a lot of Continental Airmiles in the past (when they had better airmile collecting/spending relationship with Virgin).

I collect airmiles from flights, hotel bookings, rental car bookings, special offers, Tesco Clubcard Points (I can convert them directly to BA airmiles) and my husband and I use the BA American Express Card (we have a high level card and get 1.5 BA airmiles for every pound we spend, 3 BA airmiles for every poind spent on BA).

With BA we generally spend our airmiles on upgrades - you can use 25,000 airmiles to upgrade a WT+ seat to Club World between London and anywhere in North America (redemption rates for the rest of the world vary..). The WT+ tickets have to be brough DIRECTLY from BA (either their internet sire, telephone reservations or their travel shops). So we normally sit in Club World for £850 + 25,000 a person. ok, not cheap, but we think a rather good deal (since you will normally pay at least £1500 to sit in Club World or in Virgin Upper Class). Sometimes you can get the WT+ for quite a bit cheaper than £850... (with the right deals/offers).

A normal UK-North America return flight in economy on BA is 50,000 air miles, WTP is 75,000 and Club World is 100,000. I also have a 2-for-1 voucher through my BA American Express which means that I could have a 2-for-1 airmile booking (so for 100,000 air miles + taxes we could have two free tickets in Club World).

Recently husband and I signed up for the BMI MBNA card. Got a 20,000 BMI airmile sign-up bonus when we first used it (no minimum spend). 18,750 BMI miles (+ just over £100 in cash and taxes) each just got us a one-way Business Class ticket on Lufthansa from Denver to Heathrow (via Frankfurt). We bought the outbound one-way flight when Expedia recently had some sort of "mistake" fare loaded - one way American Airlines First Class tickets from Heathrow to Los Angeles for £465 per person (so first class out - to visit relatives in LA and then go on to ski in Colorado - and business class on the return in January cost us about £600 per person... but that is an EXCEPTIONAL bargain).

Airmiles work for different people in different ways (people want different things out of the schemes and with different airlines).

Boo

 

[Lizzybear]

I'd heard how much cheaper DIY holiday booking was and thought i'd do it for our next trip but the Virgin holiday's deal for 3 free nights at Pop and free dining meant I got the holiday for cheaper than the prices i'd found for booking things separately (and that was when we were going to split our stay between on and off-site!) Not only that but I got car hire with platinum insurance instead of the transfers i'd previously budgeted in (includes all surcharges for me being 23 when we travel) I think you need to compare all the options, sometimes the packages are more expensive but not always.