DIY Holidays

I'm not sure what you mean by DIY holidays - do you mean as opposed to booking through a travel agent?

I don't think I've ever booked an entire holiday through a travel agent - I've occasionally booked flights with one, but never a package. I generally find that it's fine, and both more flexible and cheaper than a package deal. In terms of precautions, I do a fair amount of research before booking - tripadvisor.com is a great resource for that.

I've booked several "DIY" holidays as you call them. Mainly to Florida.

There is a good reason for this. To book a package with a company means that you pay for flights, accommodation (we always book a villa rather than stay at a hotel) and car hire. However we have issues with this system and in particular the accommodation.

Many travel companies only offer Villa's on allocation when you arrive at the airport. This means that you have no idea where you will be until you speak to a rep and receive the code or key to the villa you are staying at. I've heard and read horror stories of families turning up to Villa's that are in a terrible state of repair or are miles away from the main attractions. There was no way we were going to risk that happening on what was an expensive family holiday. Also we felt the prices being asked were a little high compared to what we could find privately.

Therefore we booked flights, car hire and accommodation separately. In doing so we got the best price possible for the car hire and flights and found a villa that not only was exactly what we wanted, where we wanted and had excellent facilities, but was also cheaper than what a comparable villa would have cost us as part of a package deal.

However what put us off the whole package deal with the travel companies, was not the cost, or the fact we felt it would be cheaper doing it ourselves. It was the lack of knowledge about where our Villa would be, it's state of repair and the distance it would be from the main attractions. To travel not knowing where we would be staying felt too uncomfortable.

Hi

I recently went on my first DIY holiday to the costa de la luz in spain and found this site page really useful. It told me everything I had to do before my trip:

Sorry was going to post a link but not allowed - if you go to Costa-Luz-Holiday dot com and then look down the left hand side of the site you see a page called Travelling Tips, it gives you a great breakdown of what needs to be done.

It certainly helped take the stress out of it all and I loved the fact that we could do what we wanted when we wanted as we weren't tied to tourist company schedules

Emailing an offer often works.

Depending on the location, the price of hotels can often be drastically reduced. We did a round-the-world trip from Papau New Guinea via USA, UK, etc. back to PNG. As I knew the timing, but was not too fussy about the itinary, I contacted several hotels in each location, asking for their best prices. In many case I got discounts of more than 35%. Many tourist locations in Europe are now so starved of tourists that discounts are a normal situation.

We had an excellent trip to Turkey DIY. We found accomodation through Owner's Direct which I think is a brilliant site, then got the cheapest flights we could. We always self cater, as we find it easier being vegetarians with an added wheat-free complication, and we like to be well off the beaten track. In the case of the Turkey trip, the house owner arranger a hire car for us, met us at the airport and fed us on the first night. It was lovely!

I've only done it in the UK, probably a different kettle of fish. But I love turning up to somewhere and finding the accommodation that you researched and booked yourself is as fantastic as you imagined!

Another advantage of doing the booking oneself is that it can be easily changed. If the accommodation is not as advertised then it is usually simple to move to the better hotel down the road - the one which did not have the wonderful website.