The other day I overheard a conversation between two women discussing their summer holiday plans. One was telling the other that she had gone to her local travel agent and asked for a cheap package holiday in Spain. The agent had quickly managed to find a holiday that suited and the lady booked it immediately.The other woman said that she wished she could do the same but had been unable to find a travel agent who could help. Apparently, someone she knew recommended Northern Cyprus to her. The description of its climate, fabulous beaches, beautiful scenery and welcoming local people deeply appealed to her but she had been unable to find any travel agent offering package holidays there. The person who recommended Northern Cyprus to her explained how it was possible to book flights and accommodation online but she felt apprehensive about not going through a travel agent.I was quite taken aback at hearing this admission of total dependency on travel agents and ignorance of Internet travel sites. After all, this was 2008 in the U.K. where traditional travel agents have long since been marginalised by online travel sites. Yet, as the conversation developed it became apparent that neither woman knew anything about what resources the Internet offers in this respect.It got me thinking about how many other people there were around who need tips on organizing travel online and when I got home I decided to write down the following seven steps for them.
Step 1: Finding out about the travel destination – Open Google and type into the search box, the name of whatever country or general area you want to holiday in, followed by the words “travel information” or “travel guide”. For example; “Spain travel information”. Browse several of the sites your search throws up and then decide which ones give you the best travel tips relevant to your holiday needs.
Step 2: Deciding on the actual resort – Use the best sites you find from step 1 to decide which resort or locality offers you most of what you want for your vacation. For example, localities with secluded beaches or beaches with lots of facilities, resorts that have plenty to keep the children occupied or quiet villages in scenic locations, etc. Having familiarised yourself with all that you want to know about the resort or locality, ascertain the nearest airports (or other relevant transportation centres).
Step 3: Finding suitable accommodation – When you have found some resorts that satisfy your criteria, look for suitable accommodation in them. This may require typing a new search term into Google because the sites you have looked at so far may not have sufficient detailed information about specific accommodation in a given locality. They may however have some links to other sites that do. If so, check the links out before starting a new search. If you do need to do a new search, the best search term to use would be something like; Name of resort or locality followed by the word “accommodation”. For example if after researching southern Spain, you had decided you liked what you had read about Mojacar as a holiday resort, you would type; “Mojacar accommodation”. Here’s a tip worth remembering: you may need to refer back to the other website pages that you have already opened so keep them open by doing your accommodation search in a new tab. In case you don’t know about using tabs, take a look at your browser tools options and learn how to set your browser up so that you can open new pages in new tabs.
Step 4: Checking cheapest flight availability – When you have ascertained that accommodation exists in your chosen locality, the next step is check out what flights (or other transportation) is available to get you to the resort. Open another tab on your browser and this time type in the search term, “cheapest flights” followed by the name of nearest airport. If there are other, more distant airports that you would be prepared to consider, you might want to run separate searches for each airport. Spend time on checking for flights because quite considerable variations in ticket prices exits, not only from flight operator to flight operator but also from one airport to another even when they are more or less the same distance from your departure airport and operated by the same company. Very significant price variations will also be found by trying different departure and arrival dates.
Step 5: Provisionally book accommodation – Assuming that you establish the availability of flights (or other transportation) at the time you want and within your budget, you will be in a position to provisionally book accommodation. Return to the browser tab you left open with the websites providing accommodation details and follow the instructions for contacting the person or organisation offering the accommodation. Sometimes this will be an automatic online process and sometimes you will need to send an email. Submit the dates you have decided upon from the flight availability research. You will not normally be asked for a deposit at this stage but if you are, inform the accommodation owner that you want them to provisionally hold the dates until after you have booked your flight.
Step 6: Booking your flight – Having received confirmation that the accommodation is available for you between the selected dates, return to the website where you found the cheapest flight deal and book your outgoing and return flights. Very occasionally you might be unlucky and the flights on the selected dates are no longer available. If so you will need to select new dates and redo step 5.
Step 7: Confirm Accommodation – Once you have your flight has been booked you are in a safe position to confirm your accommodation booking. Usually, this will require that a deposit is paid, either online or by bank transfer. Either way, the balance is usually paid upon arrival at the accommodation.
Best Travel Tip For Being Your Own Travel Agent
Bad Credit Mortgage Loans
Bad credit mortgage loans are not difficult to get if you know how to find the right companies. Although the subprime mortgage collapse in the USA has made many lenders nervous of debtors with bad credit records, it is still possible to secure an adverse credit mortgage.The reason for this is that the lender has your house as security and will take it from you if you fail to pay. If this sounds blunt, it is meant to, since you have to understand the truth and what would happen if you failed to pay. If a company is willing to provide you with a mortgage loan in spite of your bad credit record, they will not hesitate to recoup their money if you fail to pay.This is particularly true now, after the subprime collapse – a subprime mortgage is simply another term for a bad credit mortgage loan. It is important, therefore, that you are sure that you can easily meet the payments if you accept such a mortgage loan. There are things that you can do to make it easier for you to pay, and here are a few of the major steps that you can take to reduce your monthly payments to a minimum.Mortgage lenders will offer you bad credit mortgage loans, but generally at a higher than standard interest rates. This provides them a bit extra security against you failing to pay: the extra interest from all the other lenders will make up for your default. Even though your house will be sold to pay for your loan in event of default, the lender cannot be sure of making the full amount from the sale.Your first act, therefore, should be to compare the interest rates. Some companies will charge more for arranging the adverse credit mortgage than others, but then offset that with a lower interest rate. That is possibly better for you if you can afford the initial payment, since then your monthly payments will be less, and that is what you are trying to keep to a minimum. It is the payments that you have to make every single month for years that eventually get too much for some to be able to maintain, so the lower these are the better.Depending on your age you will probably be offered options on the repayment period. The shorter this period, then the sooner your debt will be paid, and the less interest you will pay on it. However, your repayments will also be higher, and you should never agree to repay more than you can comfortably afford. What if the interest rate increases, or if your income drops: this can happen for a number of reasons, long term illness for example.If you take bad credit mortgage loans over a longer period you will certainly pay more in interest, especially at an elevated rate, but you will also have a lower monthly payment to meet. You could take this type of mortgage with a company that will allow you to pay more when you can afford it, and so complete the mortgage without penalty. This would be the ideal arrangement: pay less at the beginning (after all your credit is bad so you have been in financial difficulties) and then more as your financial situation improves.The lenders themselves should see the benefits of such an arrangement, yet many still insist on early settlement penalties. That means if you take the loan over 20 years, and repay it in 15, then you have to pay the extra 5 years interest, or least a proportion of it. Look for an adverse credit mortgage lender that will allow you to pay early without this kind of penalty.Another way to reduce your payment is to pay a higher deposit if possible. I know this might be difficult if you have had money problems, but although you might be able to get a 100% mortgage, you will pay extra interest on this and your repayments will be considerable higher than if you could arrange a 95% or even 90% mortgage by making a 5% or 10% deposit.In fact, if you can pay 25% on your home, no matter how unlikely this is, you will probably be offered a standard rate mortgage no matter how bad your credit record is, and you will pay even less each month. This is good information, but most people requiring bad credit mortgage loans will be unable to raise this amount of money, and the realistic way to reduce your initial monthly repayments is to take the mortgage over as long a period as possible, and with as low an interest rate as you can negotiate.I say this because negotiation often works. If you can provide evidence that your bad debts were due to unusual and unforeseen circumstances, and that you have paid your creditors and are in a significantly stronger financial position, you should be able to negotiate a favorable rate of interest, and your mortgage loan need not be unduly penalized in this way.Bad credit mortgage loans come in many forms, and which you settle for is completely your own choice. There is no need to take the first one offered, and if you take the above advice then you will certainly have done your best to reduce your monthly payments to an easily affordable level. These are the all important words: ‘easily affordable’, and if you succeeded in that then you will have succeeded in getting finance for your new home that you are confident of repaying year after year. A job done well!