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…