One week starts from around £147 per person, including flights from regional airports and staying in a four star hotel near the sea in Malta.

Choice Holidays who are offering these deals are taking advantage of Ryan Air flights, and combining them with their own hotel purchasing power to give people good deals. And I’m absolutely for it! If someone else has the headache of booking Ryan Air flights for you, then it’s not a bad idea to take advantage of it.

I’m not sure whether Choice have managed to negotiate anything with the airlines themselves. It’s not uncommon for travel agents to buy up large numbers of seats at a reduced fare, and then bundle them with hotel deals and mark them up. Since Ryan Air’s business strategy is so different from many other airlines, I’d be interested to know if that’s what’s going on.

However they manage to do it, it’s got to be a pretty good deal. Just remember to check out the TripAdvisor website before you book! Oh, and check on Kayak to make sure you’re not getting ripped off. At these prices though, that’s unlikely.

Choice Holidays > Malta deals

I’m always watching the rather brilliant icelolly.com website for good deals – even if I have absolutely no intention of travelling. The deals they offer are somewhat staggering, although a quick flick over to tripadvisor reveals that many of the cheapest deals are in sub-standard hotels. Having said that, for cheap trips to Spain, you can do a lot worse than to check out this website first.

I found this rather tempting trip for only £60 per person, including return flights from Edinburgh and three nights’ hotel accomodation. Difficult to imagine a cheaper deal than that (bearing in mind that the flight alone would usually cost twice that).

http://ow.ly/1FmIk

This particular one is at the hotel Merce which gets a 73% thumbs up on Tripadvisor (pretty rare for a hotel in this category). Your £60 won’t cover the transfer from the airport to the hotel which is around 70km. Hiring a car would be a great way to see this fantastic part of Spain – much of which is overlooked by most tourists. However, it’s likely that your car hire would cost almost the same as the package. But then at £60, who cares?

Just to drum the point home about TripAdvisor, the next option up is the rather smarter looking Hotel Flamingo. It’s just £6 more for the trip and going by the photos the hotel looks immeasurably better. However a glance at the reviews on Trip Advisor show that it’s probably one to avoid, with 37 out of 86 travellers rating the hotel as “Terrible”. Not so good.

Think of India.

One other tip for those thinking of India as a holiday destination. Although airfares have come down considerably in the last couple of years with the increased competition, you can get an absolute steal by looking for trips to Goa around November. If you’re prepared to hop on a plane tomorrow, you can get a return flight to Goa from London or Manchester for under £200. More about that nearer the time…

I used to use a travel agent to book all my flights, and then Kayak came along and I assumed it was cheaper just to run a search that way. It’s certainly a lot easier to do it online, rather than ring up and wait for an agent and then painstakingly talk through the dates and locations. On balance I do prefer to do it on my computer.

But sometimes, an agent can not only save you money but get you all sorts of extras. Have you ever, for instance, tried to book a stopover using Kayak? It’s absolutely impossible! Last year I took a trip from London to Dubai, Hong Kong, over to Bangkok and then back to London. If I’d done it using Kayak it would have cost me about £3,000 and routed me via Sydney! A call to Emirates sorted it out, and I got it for a fraction of the cost.

The lesson? Sometimes it pays to ring up.

I found another site where you can enter a destination and various agencies will be dispalyed that give you the best deals to that destination, as well as the months they’re available from.

Just go to : www.cheapflights.co.uk and enter the destination. Then you can browse through different agents. If you’re booking business or first class, these agents can usually get you a better deal than searching online. And one last trick is to ring up FlightCentre who will actually give you the flight for free if you call them and they can’t beat the quote you’ve got from another agent or website.

Usually if I read a deal such as “fly for free” I immediatley consign it to the dustbin – after all, an offer like that would usually involve participation or is simply a scam.

But the other night at a party I met someone who works for a travel agent called Flight Centre. It’s got quite a few shops on British high streets and a growing online presence. Unlike Expedia or any of the other big online flight retailers, you can’t enter your dates in on their website for the flight you want to take. However, they will show you their best deals and the times they’re available for – then it’s a matter of ringing up and asking. For instance, you might enter your dates for travel to New York in September, and they’ll show you deals they’ve got with different airlines for that part of the year and the cheapest fare. Then you ring them up to sort something out.

The good thing about this is that they’re often cheaper, and as a consequence the “Fly For Free” deal says that if you find a flight, and they can’t beat the price then they will give you the ticket for free! Just ring up after you’ve found a great fare and they will see if they can beat it. If not, you’ll get the seat for free.

It’s a good reminder that you don’t always get the best fares by searching through online sites. “Bucketshops” as they’re called were set up a few decades ago and still provide among the cheapest fares out there. Their premise is to buy seats in advance and then resell them, so they benefit from a larger economy of scale and airline discounts.

The other good thing about phone-based travel agents like this one is that they can also do special things like stopovers and good deals on round-the-world flights which are almost impossible to arrange online, even now. So if your flight requirements are even slightly complicated you should definitely ring up an agent.

In reality, I’m not sure whether Fly For Free actually gives out free tickets. More likely is that they’ll manage to find a fare that’s slightly cheaper than the one you’ve found and sell you that. It is, after all, a lot cheaper to let a fare go for £5 less than just to give it away. But still worth giving them a ring, because you’re bound to save something.

Flightcentre.co.uk
0844 800 8660

I’m not retired yet, but if I was then I can imagine worse ways of spending the winter than to be on a mild island in the middle of the Mediterranean. For most tourists, Malta is a scorching summer destination, but if you’re prepared to travel out of season there are some staggering deals to be had.

Typically, if you commit to two weeks or more in a hotel your room can cost as little as £15/night. Most hotels also include heated swimming pools and access to local facilities. It might not be hot enough to lounge on the beach, but it’s a pleasant 20 degrees, and a lot nicer than snow-blotted Britain!

Run a search for Malta extended stay hotels to get some ideas, and also have a look on Kayak. The other thing worth doing is ringing up the hotel directly, telling them that you want to stay for a longish time and see what deal they’ll offer you. It will usually be cheaper than the websites.

Airlines are also conspiring to make Malta a much cheaper destination than it was previously, with several budget carriers flying there (including Ryan Air) as well as the country’s national airline, Air Malta. You can find return flights from London in winter for as little as £50.

How often do you see ‘too good to be true’ offers online? Personally, I stumble across pages of the things every week. Usually they’re littered with bad, animated images and spelling mistakes. So when I found an eBay store offering cruise vouchers, with similarly ill-designed graphics I nearly clicked away.

But I thought it wise to invest a little bit more time. The eBay shop has the unimaginative name of ‘Best Cheap Cruises‘ and operates a business whereby you can purchase a voucher which will then entitle you to make a reservation on any number of cruises available in their database.

Clicking onto their site, the cruises are all fixed price and include accomodation for two people:

Gold Cruises : £300
Platinum Cruises : £875
Diamond Cruises: £1800
Titanium Cruises: £3000

You can then bid on eBay for a voucher which will entitle  you to a cruise of a particular type (i.e. Gold, Platinum or Diamond). If you are the winning bidder, it’s a matter of going on their site and choosing the cruise you want. Obviously, you’ll have to buy flights separately.

To give you an idea, Diamond vouchers tend to go on eBay for between £200 – £250. The voucher entitles you to a cruise for two people in the Diamond category, an example of which is a 6 night cruise departing and returning to Miami via Mexico and Belize on a Royal Caribbean ship.

Searching on Kayak for the same cruise, I managed to find a ticket per person for $651. For two, the price would be $1300, or £730. Were you to buy a voucher for £200, the potential savings are around £530 for the holiday.

Over the next few days I’m going to be watching the site to see if this really does produce the goods. I’ll also compare the price of the cruises they’re offering to the actual price you end up paying to see if it’s worth it. Watch this space!

Since taking time out of a career and ‘gap’ years are so fashionable now, I thought of sharing an idea with you that involves a lot of travelling and getting paid. And if you have sea-legs, then this might be a brilliant opportunity!

I am of course talking about getting a job on board a cruise ship. More specifically, if you have special knowledge or a special skill then being an on-board expert is your ticket to a free cruise!

The way it works is like this — let’s say you’re an expert on ancient Roman history. You apply to a cruise-line that happens to be going around the Mediterranean and agree to take free passage in exchange for a few hours’ lecturing. The cruise line will also often pay your airfare and you get all the perks of being a passenger on board.

Alternatively for a longer-term outlook you might considering for a full time position. Although you’ll be in a cramped cabin (which you’ll probably have to share), your income is tax free and relatively well paid. You also get the opportunity to see a lot of popular cruise destinations. Remember that there is also no need to pay for accommodation and food while you’re onboard and the deal is actually very attractive.

So, not a bad idea if you want a gap year that actually pays!

Have a look at these sites:

https://www.cruiseservices.co.uk/questions-answers.html

http://www.cruiselinejobs.com/

Ok, so you’re looking to go around the world and you don’t want to fly. That’s understandable : flying in planes makes your carbon footprint something of a monster. If you’re like me and believe that the journey there is quite a lot of the fun, then going overland will definitely appeal to you.

Most articles I’ve read on it previously have said that the only way to get across oceans is to book a ticket on a freighter. Of course you can do this, and you’ll pay around $70 per day.

But I’ve found a little trick for those of you who don’t think they can handle two weeks on a freighter ship. It’s this – repositioning cruises. Every year, ships migrate between hot and cold climates to serve the needs of the market. In spring, many cruise ships move Eastwards across the Atlantic, and make a return journey in the autumn.

So here’s my tip. If you’re doing either of those routes and you don’t fancy either a Freighter or the QM2, then check out the Kayak Cruise search from about.com :

http://kayak.about.com/cruises

And then search for Transatlantic. It’s also worth bearing in mind that some ships also cruise between South America and Southern Africa. Other interesting routes include Cape Town to Rome. All these cruises are silly cheap, especially if you book relatively last minute.

What I found

It’s important to know when ships will be repositioning; once you know this you can search for the month and the location and hopefully Kayak will throw up a fare for the reposition.

Searching for March and Transatlantic I found a ship sailing from Sao Paulo to Barcelona. It’s on the Splendor of the Seas (one of those enormous Royal Carribbean ships), and takes 14 nights. The price? Wait for it… £319 per person. The equivilant amount of time on a freighter would be around  over £1000 pp.

Pros and Cons

Cruises aren’t for everyone. But then, neither are freighters. They’re both totally different experiences. Generally though, the benefits of a freighter are that

• you’ll get to know the crew
• slightly more ‘authentic experience’
• bigger cabin
• fewer distractions = more reading!

The cruise option has these things in its favour:

• more entertainment
• a lot more food (although food on freighters is fine, too)
• more ports of call

It’s important to remember that often on a freighter you’re not allowed to disembark. Or if the ship does dock, it might only be for a few hours at night so you’ll be unlikely to see anything of the city where you land.

If you can hack being surrounded by people wearing bumbags and shorts, then a cruise is great. Personally, given the chance to save £600 per person on a transatlantic crossing, with a few extra stops and a lot more dining options available I know which one I’d choose.