For the price of two nights in a UK hotel you can fly to a warm country and spend 7 nights including transfers. As a bonus you get beter service from people who actually want your business. Even eating out has become more expensive. It's about time the public voted with its feet to show how cheesed off, we are with being ripped off in nour own country.
Those places that really try are packed out with regular custom.. I wonder why?
We have just spent a week in Dorset and as beautiful as it was it was a lot more expensive than a week in Spain would have been ,even with the high APD on flying it still works out cheaper than Britain after you have factored in the high cost of fuel, hotels and restaurants, here, and dont even get me started on the extortionate entrance prices for attractions !
Plus the roadworks which are now endemic everywhere you go are another factor against this country.
Another question is why do the majority of British hotels charge per person and not per room as they do abroad, especially America. The other downside to this country is that children are not always welcomed as they are abroad especially in restaurants.
I agree with the previous user "why do the majority of British hotels charge per person and not per room as they do abroad, especially America." I have stayed in 5* luxury abroad for around £100 a night, the price of a frilly-sheeted B&B in the UK! The hotel industry is far too greedy. They rely on the high population and the tourists that need to stay here for whatever reason to pay the rip-off prices. I don't know of any UK hotels which provide the fantastic breakfast buffets you find abroad, they usually include an "english breakfast" in their rates which is definitely not to my taste and poor value for non-meat eaters that end up paying for a piece of toast!
Weather is another problem, which although you can encounter bad weather in many places, the "entertainment" here is out of the range of the average family's budgets. Again they can rely on desperate parents trying to amuse their kids when the sun stops shining.
Apart from the often high charges in restaurants, if you don't want to live on junk food, the opening hours in the UK are a joke in tourist areas. Many a time we have wanted a meal only to find we're too late after around 2pm for lunch or 8pm for dinner.
The sardine-like beaches and the traffic jams are another issue!
It's even worth putting up with budget flights for a few hours to fly to more relaxing places.
Purely in VFM terms, holidaying aborad will be better because of the cheaper travel & accomodation &, possibly, food (?). In terms of £ cost, UK is a lot cheaper. There are many quiet, unspolit places if you put yourself out a bit to find them. Most people haven't explored their own country.
Yes holidays abroard are probably cheaper but travelling can be very tiring and exhausting.
My wife and I recently travelled by flight from Gatwick airport ( a most disorganised and badly designed airport) the flight was at a ridiculous time of 6.30 am not including the fact we had to be there two hours beforehand. After airport security we must have walked about 1.5 to 2 miles just to get to the aircraft. We arrived at our destination approx 2 hours later and then boarded a coach to our resort hotel which took another 1.5 hours. By this time we spent the rest of the day sleeping and recovering from our ordeal.
On arrival back in UK (which we were dreading) We had to walk the walk for another 1.5 -2 miles just to pick up our baggage, having waited about half hour we were told we would have to go up and down stairs to another point to get the baggage. We had arranged for a taxi to pick us up which was almost impossible to know where he was due to further development at the airport.
Yes holidays abroard are probably cheaper but travelling can be very tiring and exhausting.
My wife and I recently travelled by flight from Gatwick airport ( a most disorganised and badly designed airport) the flight was at a ridiculous time of 6.30 am not including the fact we had to be there two hours beforehand. After airport security we must have walked about 1.5 to 2 miles just to get to the aircraft. We arrived at our destination approx 2 hours later and then boarded a coach to our resort hotel which took another 1.5 hours. By this time we spent the rest of the day sleeping and recovering from our ordeal.
On arrival back in UK (which we were dreading) We had to walk the walk for another 1.5 -2 miles just to pick up our baggage, having waited about half hour we were told we would have to go up and down stairs to another point to get the baggage. We had arranged for a taxi to pick us up which was almost impossible to know where he was due to further development at the airport.
Hi!! Truck...The 6.30am flight is usually the cheapest in the price list for obvious reasons. So you gained financially somewhere, but lost on creature comforts. The two hours before check in, is a British Airports Authority decision to help the duty free shops meet thier stringent targets. The airport is in new hands now and i understand this is being sorted in 2011.(Singapore is 40mins andis busier)
Most hardened Gatwick travellers walk downstairs from the top screens to the exactly dulicate baggage screens in the baggage areas and wait for the bags.( walking about 20 feet downwards) I can only presume you are new to the exciting world of Gatwick charter/budget flights.
However, you can get the Helsinki for £30 or Crete for £90....you would be hard pushed to get one nights B&B in the Cotswolds for that. So we must suffer a little to enjoy ourselves. Red wine and warm skys are an excellent counter to jetlag.
This poll leaves a lot to be desired, but I think the only answer is in the question 'Good Value' so my vote goes to 'Going abroard works out cheaper' but I would have voted for all four choices if the opportunity was there as I would prefer to support the UK..
I would also suggest the four basic questions are misleading and do not allow proper consideration. However I would have to enter the Holidays Abroad column since in terms of value for money we in Britain just can not compete. The observations about room charges rather than per head charges are a case in point. It really can not cost twice as much to accommodate two in the same bed. Food is also very much more expensive and generally of modest quality.
I've travelled the world and been on many foreign holidays over the years but things have changed. They're not the bargain they once were. You think you've got a bargain holiday price or a cheap air ticket but then all the extras start being added on. There was an article in the Daily Mail on 9th July about a guy, Tom Mitchelson, who bought a £99 holiday to Turkey. Bargain! But, by the time he'd paid all the extras - getting to the airport, parking his car for the duration of his vacation, transfers, breakfasts and airconditioning - he'd paid over £360 just for him alone and that didn't include any car hire in resort.
How many people, who claim their foreign holiday is cheaper than holidaying in the UK, actually sit down and work out exactly what they have spent. On top of the cost is the awful experience that flyng has become with the over-crowded and uncomfortable UK airports and planes. Then there's the cost of travel insurance and parking your car, the queues to check in, endless security checks, fighting for seats on the aircraft, paying through the nose for a sandwich or a packet of crisps, long coach transfers the other end. That's before you discover the hotel doesn't live up to the photographs, there's a noisy building site next door and you're bitten by mosquitoes on your first night because you left the window open. Ugh! I'm so over all that now.
Does anyone calculate how much changing currency actually costs them - the charges made by the bureau de change AND the poor rates they offer. If you are travelling in Europe, you getter far fewer Euros for your £1 now. We were in Italy earlier this year and meals out were very expensive as was supermarket shopping. And, even though it was May, it was grey and wet for nearly the whole two weeks. The beaches were empty and windswept but, with only basic Italian language skills, we couldn't even opt to go and see a movie to fill in the time.
We also visited New Zealand and Australia earlier this year. On a similar trip ten years ago, everything seemed so cheap. It was just the opposite this time and we really had to be very careful about what we spent our money on. The one thing we couldn't avoid was car hire and we were really ripped off.
Now I'm back in the UK I can breathe a big sigh of relief. I can rent a holiday-let house anywhere on Britain's fabulous and varied coastline and explore the area. Even at the height of summer, in school holidays, it costs a maximum of £150 a head for a week in 5-star luxury (less if we're prepared to settle for 4-stars). As with a hotel, our bed linen and bath towels are included in the price as are the gas and electricity we use while there. The house we've chosen offers two televisions, a DVD player with a selection of family-friendly DVDs as well as films for the grown-ups, a sound system, a south-facing garden with barbecue and free parking for two cars. It's only a couple of hundred yards from the seafront. We can use our own car to get there, loaded with everything we need/want for the holiday without surcharges for excess baggage and there will be no car hire charges to add to the holiday cost. We can prepare our own meals, using delicous local produce, knowing what the costs will be thus allowing us to enjoy the odd meal out and occasional ice creams all round. If it's too wet for the beach we can go to the movies, to a museum, to the local library for books, magazines and DVD rental, to Internet cafes, to the theatre, to the farmers' markets, to the county shows, to the air shows, to historical sites, to National Trust properties, to gardens opened to the public and to the varied local visitor attractions. We can take our bicycles and explore the area that way. We can go on boat trips around the bay. Fish and chips, cream teas, the daily paper enjoyed over morning coffee, English language magazines and books readily available everywhere, playing tennis on the local courts, fishing from a perch on the rocks, eating fudge whilst watching the locals play bowls or cricket, collecting shells in a seaside bucket knowing you can take them home with you without paying a baggage surcharge, supping a pint of proper beer in a country pub, nostalgic games of bat and ball on the beach, strolling along the seafront at dusk. No airports, no travel insurance, no car hire, no baggage surcharges, no queues, no language barrier, no mobile phone surcharges. Bring it on!!!
Pedros my friend, it was hardly "Jetlag" more "Gatwickairportlag" in my case. Our next trip will be in the UK, come hell or highwater- hosepipe ban permitting!!!
Little Cherub - it sounds exhausting, like home from home! No mention made about the hours of tiring and stressful UK travel. Everyone has their own views on what makes a holiday and a lot depends on family circumstances, whether you've got kids that want such things as TVs and organised activities.
we have just got ack from a 5 day trip to rhyl on a coach £190 for five days half board entertainment 3 nights and did not have to mess about at the airport and my scooter goes free not like when i go abroad i have to get taxiis to and from resorts as buses dont take scooters
The answers you provide are not mutually exclusive. I vote yes to all 4 of them !
You only permit one answer, ergo this survey fails the consumer accuracy criteria standard.
For the price of two nights in a UK hotel you can fly to a warm country and spend 7 nights including transfers. As a bonus you get beter service from people who actually want your business. Even eating out has become more expensive. It's about time the public voted with its feet to show how cheesed off, we are with being ripped off in nour own country.
Those places that really try are packed out with regular custom.. I wonder why?
I agree with Pedros.
We have just spent a week in Dorset and as beautiful as it was it was a lot more expensive than a week in Spain would have been ,even with the high APD on flying it still works out cheaper than Britain after you have factored in the high cost of fuel, hotels and restaurants, here, and dont even get me started on the extortionate entrance prices for attractions !
Plus the roadworks which are now endemic everywhere you go are another factor against this country.
Another question is why do the majority of British hotels charge per person and not per room as they do abroad, especially America. The other downside to this country is that children are not always welcomed as they are abroad especially in restaurants.
I agree with the previous user "why do the majority of British hotels charge per person and not per room as they do abroad, especially America." I have stayed in 5* luxury abroad for around £100 a night, the price of a frilly-sheeted B&B in the UK! The hotel industry is far too greedy. They rely on the high population and the tourists that need to stay here for whatever reason to pay the rip-off prices. I don't know of any UK hotels which provide the fantastic breakfast buffets you find abroad, they usually include an "english breakfast" in their rates which is definitely not to my taste and poor value for non-meat eaters that end up paying for a piece of toast!
Weather is another problem, which although you can encounter bad weather in many places, the "entertainment" here is out of the range of the average family's budgets. Again they can rely on desperate parents trying to amuse their kids when the sun stops shining.
Apart from the often high charges in restaurants, if you don't want to live on junk food, the opening hours in the UK are a joke in tourist areas. Many a time we have wanted a meal only to find we're too late after around 2pm for lunch or 8pm for dinner.
The sardine-like beaches and the traffic jams are another issue!
It's even worth putting up with budget flights for a few hours to fly to more relaxing places.
Purely in VFM terms, holidaying aborad will be better because of the cheaper travel & accomodation &, possibly, food (?). In terms of £ cost, UK is a lot cheaper. There are many quiet, unspolit places if you put yourself out a bit to find them. Most people haven't explored their own country.
Yes holidays abroard are probably cheaper but travelling can be very tiring and exhausting.
My wife and I recently travelled by flight from Gatwick airport ( a most disorganised and badly designed airport) the flight was at a ridiculous time of 6.30 am not including the fact we had to be there two hours beforehand. After airport security we must have walked about 1.5 to 2 miles just to get to the aircraft. We arrived at our destination approx 2 hours later and then boarded a coach to our resort hotel which took another 1.5 hours. By this time we spent the rest of the day sleeping and recovering from our ordeal.
On arrival back in UK (which we were dreading) We had to walk the walk for another 1.5 -2 miles just to pick up our baggage, having waited about half hour we were told we would have to go up and down stairs to another point to get the baggage. We had arranged for a taxi to pick us up which was almost impossible to know where he was due to further development at the airport.
Will we fly from Gatwick again -NO never again!!!
Yes holidays abroard are probably cheaper but travelling can be very tiring and exhausting.
My wife and I recently travelled by flight from Gatwick airport ( a most disorganised and badly designed airport) the flight was at a ridiculous time of 6.30 am not including the fact we had to be there two hours beforehand. After airport security we must have walked about 1.5 to 2 miles just to get to the aircraft. We arrived at our destination approx 2 hours later and then boarded a coach to our resort hotel which took another 1.5 hours. By this time we spent the rest of the day sleeping and recovering from our ordeal.
On arrival back in UK (which we were dreading) We had to walk the walk for another 1.5 -2 miles just to pick up our baggage, having waited about half hour we were told we would have to go up and down stairs to another point to get the baggage. We had arranged for a taxi to pick us up which was almost impossible to know where he was due to further development at the airport.
Will we fly from Gatwick again -NO never again!!!
Hi!! Truck...The 6.30am flight is usually the cheapest in the price list for obvious reasons. So you gained financially somewhere, but lost on creature comforts. The two hours before check in, is a British Airports Authority decision to help the duty free shops meet thier stringent targets. The airport is in new hands now and i understand this is being sorted in 2011.(Singapore is 40mins andis busier)
Most hardened Gatwick travellers walk downstairs from the top screens to the exactly dulicate baggage screens in the baggage areas and wait for the bags.( walking about 20 feet downwards) I can only presume you are new to the exciting world of Gatwick charter/budget flights.
However, you can get the Helsinki for £30 or Crete for £90....you would be hard pushed to get one nights B&B in the Cotswolds for that. So we must suffer a little to enjoy ourselves. Red wine and warm skys are an excellent counter to jetlag.
This poll leaves a lot to be desired, but I think the only answer is in the question 'Good Value' so my vote goes to 'Going abroard works out cheaper' but I would have voted for all four choices if the opportunity was there as I would prefer to support the UK..
I would also suggest the four basic questions are misleading and do not allow proper consideration. However I would have to enter the Holidays Abroad column since in terms of value for money we in Britain just can not compete. The observations about room charges rather than per head charges are a case in point. It really can not cost twice as much to accommodate two in the same bed. Food is also very much more expensive and generally of modest quality.
I've travelled the world and been on many foreign holidays over the years but things have changed. They're not the bargain they once were. You think you've got a bargain holiday price or a cheap air ticket but then all the extras start being added on. There was an article in the Daily Mail on 9th July about a guy, Tom Mitchelson, who bought a £99 holiday to Turkey. Bargain! But, by the time he'd paid all the extras - getting to the airport, parking his car for the duration of his vacation, transfers, breakfasts and airconditioning - he'd paid over £360 just for him alone and that didn't include any car hire in resort.
How many people, who claim their foreign holiday is cheaper than holidaying in the UK, actually sit down and work out exactly what they have spent. On top of the cost is the awful experience that flyng has become with the over-crowded and uncomfortable UK airports and planes. Then there's the cost of travel insurance and parking your car, the queues to check in, endless security checks, fighting for seats on the aircraft, paying through the nose for a sandwich or a packet of crisps, long coach transfers the other end. That's before you discover the hotel doesn't live up to the photographs, there's a noisy building site next door and you're bitten by mosquitoes on your first night because you left the window open. Ugh! I'm so over all that now.
Does anyone calculate how much changing currency actually costs them - the charges made by the bureau de change AND the poor rates they offer. If you are travelling in Europe, you getter far fewer Euros for your £1 now. We were in Italy earlier this year and meals out were very expensive as was supermarket shopping. And, even though it was May, it was grey and wet for nearly the whole two weeks. The beaches were empty and windswept but, with only basic Italian language skills, we couldn't even opt to go and see a movie to fill in the time.
We also visited New Zealand and Australia earlier this year. On a similar trip ten years ago, everything seemed so cheap. It was just the opposite this time and we really had to be very careful about what we spent our money on. The one thing we couldn't avoid was car hire and we were really ripped off.
Now I'm back in the UK I can breathe a big sigh of relief. I can rent a holiday-let house anywhere on Britain's fabulous and varied coastline and explore the area. Even at the height of summer, in school holidays, it costs a maximum of £150 a head for a week in 5-star luxury (less if we're prepared to settle for 4-stars). As with a hotel, our bed linen and bath towels are included in the price as are the gas and electricity we use while there. The house we've chosen offers two televisions, a DVD player with a selection of family-friendly DVDs as well as films for the grown-ups, a sound system, a south-facing garden with barbecue and free parking for two cars. It's only a couple of hundred yards from the seafront. We can use our own car to get there, loaded with everything we need/want for the holiday without surcharges for excess baggage and there will be no car hire charges to add to the holiday cost. We can prepare our own meals, using delicous local produce, knowing what the costs will be thus allowing us to enjoy the odd meal out and occasional ice creams all round. If it's too wet for the beach we can go to the movies, to a museum, to the local library for books, magazines and DVD rental, to Internet cafes, to the theatre, to the farmers' markets, to the county shows, to the air shows, to historical sites, to National Trust properties, to gardens opened to the public and to the varied local visitor attractions. We can take our bicycles and explore the area that way. We can go on boat trips around the bay. Fish and chips, cream teas, the daily paper enjoyed over morning coffee, English language magazines and books readily available everywhere, playing tennis on the local courts, fishing from a perch on the rocks, eating fudge whilst watching the locals play bowls or cricket, collecting shells in a seaside bucket knowing you can take them home with you without paying a baggage surcharge, supping a pint of proper beer in a country pub, nostalgic games of bat and ball on the beach, strolling along the seafront at dusk. No airports, no travel insurance, no car hire, no baggage surcharges, no queues, no language barrier, no mobile phone surcharges. Bring it on!!!
Pedros my friend, it was hardly "Jetlag" more "Gatwickairportlag" in my case. Our next trip will be in the UK, come hell or highwater- hosepipe ban permitting!!!
Little Cherub - it sounds exhausting, like home from home! No mention made about the hours of tiring and stressful UK travel. Everyone has their own views on what makes a holiday and a lot depends on family circumstances, whether you've got kids that want such things as TVs and organised activities.
we have just got ack from a 5 day trip to rhyl on a coach £190 for five days half board entertainment 3 nights and did not have to mess about at the airport and my scooter goes free not like when i go abroad i have to get taxiis to and from resorts as buses dont take scooters