UK and Europe Cheap Tickets

Free hotel nights are yours with British Airways Holidays

With airfares being higher than normal you might think getting good deals on holiday packages would be difficult, but British Airways is here to help with free hotel nights if you book through them: Special Offer hotels from British Airways Holidays

Since they can’t do anything about the flight prices it’s great that they are able to negotiate free hotel nights as part of your trip in order to keep the whole thing affordable. This is a tough summer for many travel businesses, so perhaps these hotels just have too many empty rooms and yet they don’t want to slash the price per night?

Great deals are still out there for late-summer holidays

This is actually one of the best times of the year to book a holiday because quite a few places have too many empty rooms, so competition to fill them really heats up: www.greatlatedeals.co.uk

Some of these packages are starting at prices so low that I would be suspicious if I didn’t know that greatlatedeals is a reputable company. Some of their cheapest packages are for Majorca and Egypt, and in some cases you have to fly out of Manchester to get the best price, but that’s going to be convenient for millions of people anyway because the London airports are all such a challenge most of the time.

Get more stars for less by booking a last-minute break

I’ve made no secret of my fondness for these last-minute travel deals, so I like to feature them as often as I can get away with it. Here are some great bargains that are worth a look if you’ve got a bit of time and money: Latest deals on lastminute.com

With the insane airfare prices this summer it seems like quite a few top resorts have some empty rooms for the next couple of months, so they are forced to drastically cut the price. The fine folks at lastminute.com are able to offer 5-star hotels at 3-star prices, but that’s only the beginning. If you go to Egypt, for example, the 3-star hotels are already quite cheap, so this works out to such a cheap trip that staying home might actually cost you more.

You deserve a break today, starting at £129

It’s true that Thomas Cook isn’t normally considered one of the cheapest agencies out there, but we’ve got to give them proper credit with these cheap break deals: Flight and Hotel breaks starting from £129 only at thomascook.com

Those of us who are used to booking our holidays one piece at a time are now having to rethink that strategy. These kinds of deals can often offer the exact same kind of trip that we spend days trying to cobble together, except these are actually cheaper now. It makes sense if you consider that any time you book anything they’ve got to take some kind of commission, so if you book a flight, hotel, and care hire all together they can make enough profit off one commission and pass the savings on to us.

Great British Heritage Passes are great and British

Regular readers of this column know I focus mostly on holidays for those wanting to leave our glorious islands, but people who want to explore our home turf deserve deals too, so this is for you: Great British Heritage Pass

These affordable passes allow for free entry to more than 580 of Great Britain’s most popular heritage sights, and you get to skip the queue in most of them as well. Have you seen the queues at Stonehenge? I have, and it’s not pretty at all. With this Heritage Pass you’ll be whisked right in the front with the VIPs like Prince Charles or Katie Price. For any couple or family who wants to explore a lot in a short time, these things are a must.

Culture vultures have many good options at the moment

It’s no secret that I’m fond of the travel site Isango!, even though they have that annoying exclamation mark at the end of their name that messes with my word processor’s grammar checker. They have good packages to destinations where you can experience the culture rather than just sit on a beach in a cheap place: Looking for Culture & Sightseeing? Browse thousands of cultural tours and experiences around the globe and book online with isango!

They are offering one particularly good deal where you can go to Dubai and have lunch at the Burg al Arab Hotel, which you might know as the world’s only 7-star hotel that also happens to be shaped like a big sail. I’ve heard that getting alcohol in Dubai isn’t as easy as it is in, say, Dublin, but I’ve also heard it’s not impossible either. Isango is also offering a thing where you can win £500 in travel vouchers in their “Perfect Holiday” contest. Not too shabby, that one.

It’s not too late to book a holiday home this summer

It’s very interesting that as summer marches on some of the best deals are just now showing up. You can actually still book a holiday home this summer, and prices aren’t nearly as high as you might expect: Euro Relais holiday homes – 5,000 character homes all over Europe (click here to book on-line!)

They’ve got sections featuring villas that come with their own swimming pool, and some really good last-minute villa offers as well. Here’s one in Austria for £299 for a week, that sleeps up to 5 people and has its own pool. I wonder if some of these places were priced too high early in the season so many of them are sitting empty? If that’s the case then their loss is your gain. Yay!

There are some really enticing last-minute deals at the moment

It must be that since we are now late into the holiday-booking season, things are really shaking up. The fine folks at lastminute.com are offering some really interesting deals at great prices now: Latest deals on lastminute.com

They’ve got the usual deals to Mexico and Dubai, but this time they’ve also included great packages to Thailand, Maldives, and even Gambia. I would never have thought about a holiday in Gambia, at least until I saw low prices like this. You can get a whole holiday there for prices starting at £349, making it the cheapest of the new offers. I’m not even sure where it is, and the only thing I know about it is they have gambling there, or at least with a name like Gambia I assume they do.

Cheap flights to the USA are a really good start

Almost every time I go to a cocktail party lately I hear people talking about the Airline Network as a great place for cheap flights: Airline Network - Your first stop for low cost flights

I’ve never used them myself, but many of my friends are convinced they are the cheapest out there, especially for longer flights. Right now they have some very tempting specials to the USA, and that place is still quite cheap for us once you get there because their currency is in the tank. Trust me, I know people who’ve gone recently and they almost felt embarrassed for their American friends because their money is almost worthless.