Travel Tips

There are a lot of things to be said for leaving everything until the last minute before heading off somewhere nice and exotic. It’s spontaneous, it’s exciting, it’s probably totally at odds with your normally conservative nature and it is normally excellent value for money.

For now we’ll ignore the unimportant factors such as the fact that all your clothes are in the wash and telling your boss you’ll need a week off work immediately. Here we'll just try to lend some advice towards the best way of seizing the moment and getting the best value out of your eleventh-hour getaway.

Scour the websites

Obviously it would be all the better if the missus or one of the lads has done all the legwork for you and you simply have to show up at the airport with a suitcase. If you’re the man in charge, there’s a bit of research to be done but it’s not that hard, there’s an abundance of websites out there with last minute deals available.

Some of the best ones from an Irish point of view are Last Minute www.lastminute.ie, Late Deals www.latedeals.ie and E Bookers www.ebookers.ie, all of which offer various late deals to tailor to your needs and will also give you information about car hire, insurance, etc.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to subscribe to the website’s newsletter, a service which is available on almost all of these websites, and which means you'll get all the latest last minute deals sent straight to your inbox.

Go retro

Don't entirely rule out old-style travel agents (you remember, the ones who sit behind desks inside a building on the high street). The better ones are desperate to claw back some of the customers they've lost to the web, and will have late deals to lure you in.

Go anywhere, be flexible

On the web this can leave you running around like a headless chicken, but the bigger better sites will give you an option to simply pick the latest, greatest deals. Ditto in old-style travel agents. Simply decide if you want to go somewhere hot, to a city or a resort, somewhere near or far, and approximately for how long... then, if the price is right,  just go with somewhere cheap that looks ok.

(Just remember to make sure that the town you've never heard of in the country you've never heard of isn't in the middle of a war zone or hasn't just suffered a major natural disaster).

Don’t hesitate

If you see a deal that instantly takes your fancy, nail it down straight away. The temptation is to take a look around and see can you get it anywhere for cheaper, but if it’s a particularly tasty deal, chances are that fellow last minute enthusiasts have seen it too and won’t hang around to book their seat. Air fares are also liable to change incredibly frequently so if you don’t get your act together you’ll miss out.

Remember there's a difference between low cost airlines, who get more expensive nearer to travel dates and package deals, where seats and hotels will have been booked in bulk and which, if not sold, will still cost the travel agent. In the latter case, getting a bit of money off you will be preferable to having nobody using the plane seat and hotel room that they've already shelled out for.

Travel on weekdays

This mightn’t be feasible if yours is a hectic schedule, but if you’re prepared to jet off at the drop of a hat, it can be well worth your while setting off on a weekday. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are particularly attractive because the air fares and hotel rooms will be far cheaper and more readily available.

Travel in Low Season

There are obvious disadvantages to travelling during the low season. You might miss out on a particular event, occasion or festival and the weather mightn’t be particularly favourable, but travelling in the low season isn’t all that bad. For starters, there aren’t going to be as many people around, the atmosphere will be a lot more laid back and you might find that the locals will be more friendly and accommodating than they were when inundated with visitors.

Once again, a trip during the low season will be cheaper and easier to organise, but it may also allow you to take in and experience things that you wouldn’t have normally considered when it’s at its most bustling and heaving with fellow tourists.

A quick word to the wise, what may be low season here in Ireland may not be low season in other parts of the world (particularly in the upside-down southern hemisphere). Also, it's worth checking out that the dates you've picked don't correspond with a national holiday in the place you're visiting. Bank holiday eqivalents will rarely match the ones here, or will fall midweek. Go then and you might find everything close (in the cities) or accommodation very expensive (in the resorts).

Even here in Europe,  low season can fall in the middle of summer. This is the case if you plan to go to Paris or Stockholm in August when many people shut up shop and head for the coast. Businesses close and business hotels have great deals. Stockholm in particular can be great value - you can get there with Ryanair, the city hotels dramatically cut their rates and you're only a small boat trip from the many islands and beaches nearby.

Check JOE.ie

Of course the final thing to do is to check out the weekly late deals that we collate here each week.