Cheapest Holiday Champagne Contest

MSE_Martin · 31 March 2008 at 8:53AM

What’s this all about?

I want to inspire people to realise you needn’t spend a fortune to get an overseas holiday on my five TV show It Pays To Watch (Wednesdays at 7.30pm), Of course the Flightchecker can show you when to go to get the cheapest flight, but it’s about more than that.

So this is a contest to see who’s had the cheapest overseas holiday (we’re focusing on flying in this bit). Importantly it includes accommodation (staying with friends excluded) and spending while you’re there.

Who can enter?

Anyone. Any holiday since 1 January 2007 until mid-April this year (so if you’re planning to go we want details of the plans). The holiday must be outside the UK taken by flight. This is about DIY holidays (we’re going to do Package Holidays another day). And you need to detail what you did, where you stayed and how much it cost (staying with friends is excluded).

What’s the prize?

A bottle of champagne, a lot of pride, a golden piggy, and you appear on It Pays To Watch. So, if you’re not willing to come on the programme don’t enter J

How to enter?

Just detail your story and the cost down below. The winner will be chosen with a combination of the cheapest per person and the best story (it is for TV after all). Please ensure you tell us how many people went and as much financial info as you can.

IMPORTANT INFO:

If you enter, please check your PMs (personal messages) over the next week, in case the It Pays To Watch team (who will write from the MSE ItPaysToWatch username) get in touch about your story. They will ask for some details so they can talk to you.

Best of luck

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gron1979 · 2 April 2008 at 3:03PM

i thought i would start the ball rolling on this.

Last year in June my fiance and me went to Madrid for 3 nights/4 days. We flew from Dublin to Madrid, and stayed in a 4 star hotel near the centre of town. We were upgraded to a room on the top floor with a balcony, as when we arrived at about 8.30pm the first night they had overbooked the hotel so they put is in a taxi round the corner to one of their sister hotels, where we went for dinner and then slept. Got up the next morning, got a free taxi back to the first hotel and they upgraded us, and bought us up a platter of fresh fruit.

the total cost for two people was £49.90. :beer: for flights and accomodation. We actually made £50.10! if i think about it, because we went through a double the difference site that was available at the time, through MSE!. The only problem was that it took them a long time to refund the money after we returned from the trip. So i rang up and complained and got given a £100 voucher, plus my £525 back. Which was what it should have cost to stay in the hotel for 3 nights.

overall we had a brilliant time and my fiance still takes great pride in telling people that we went to madrid, stayed in a 4 star hotel and got upgraded for £50, and that we got given a £100 voucher to go away another time.

looking forward to spotting some cheap flights and hotel rooms soon so we can spend the voucher. :j keep up the good work MSE'ers X

Tojo_Ralph · 8 April 2008 at 5:58PM

......
It is interesting that after nearly 5,000 viewings, this thread has only one reply.

To be honest, when I first saw this thread I shook my head a little, because I just simply don't get this whole "cheapest is best" thing..... ESPECIALLY when it comes to holidays.

Anyway, given that the holiday does not have to have been any fun, a pleasurable experience or enjoyable in any way, surely someone has a story to tell about cheap holidays?

shellsuit · 8 April 2008 at 6:10PM

gron1979 wrote: »

i thought i would start the ball rolling on this.

Last year in June my fiance and me went to Madrid for 3 nights/4 days. We flew from Dublin to Madrid, and stayed in a 4 star hotel near the centre of town. We were upgraded to a room on the top floor with a balcony, as when we arrived at about 8.30pm the first night they had overbooked the hotel so they put is in a taxi round the corner to one of their sister hotels, where we went for dinner and then slept. Got up the next morning, got a free taxi back to the first hotel and they upgraded us, and bought us up a platter of fresh fruit.

the total cost for two people was £49.90. :beer: for flights and accomodation. We actually made £50.10! if i think about it, because we went through a double the difference site that was available at the time, through MSE!. The only problem was that it took them a long time to refund the money after we returned from the trip. So i rang up and complained and got given a £100 voucher, plus my £525 back. Which was what it should have cost to stay in the hotel for 3 nights.

overall we had a brilliant time and my fiance still takes great pride in telling people that we went to madrid, stayed in a 4 star hotel and got upgraded for £50, and that we got given a £100 voucher to go away another time.

looking forward to spotting some cheap flights and hotel rooms soon so we can spend the voucher. :j keep up the good work MSE'ers X

So the holiday actually cost £525 in the first place before you got refunded?

I wouldn't think that counts, maybe Martin could advise?

Also, you need to include spending money

I'd post about our holiday (which was cheap, £420 for a week in Lanzarote, old town, puerto del carmen for 2 adults) but with spends it would take it to almost 2K! :rotfl:

Martin, is this based on per person, or per family/group, you don't make that clear

(And obviously a family are going to spend much more than a single person or couple)

LesD · 8 April 2008 at 7:05PM

This must go down as the dampest squib thread of all time!!!!!!!!!!!

Edinburghlass_2 · 10 April 2008 at 11:45AM

LesD wrote: »

This must go down as the dampest squib thread of all time!!!!!!!!!!!

Well we can't have that can we

I posted this thread back in 2005 and while I wasn't posting about the "cheapest" holiday I was posting about my MSE based holiday.

It was supposed to be the "trip of a lifetime" to Florida but as most people know once you've been you do tend to go back and have done the past three years.

Last year was probably the cheapest, searched for flights via Teletext but as dates weren't an issue and I booked quite late I ended up flying with Globespan and despite lots of horror stories we had a great flight there and back at £250 per person. Accommodation was booked via rpoints and 10% off voucher for £305 (bed and breakfast including free internet access) netting some £20 cashback from rpoints as was travel insurance gaining another £10 cashback and a good price. Disney and Seaworld tickets were bought online using my cashback credit card of course! and Tojo it was a cheap but fun holiday

Travellers cheques were bought from Thomas Cook at a 2 for 1 rate following a post on MSE which came just at the right time and of course the money saving continued in America despite my daughter's new found love of shopping

So I'm sure some of you out there must have a similar story you can tell? I haven't started researching for this year yet so I look forward to watching this episode.

Mark7799 · 10 April 2008 at 9:30PM

I can't see how you can judge this

What about holidays of different durations, types of accommodation (in extremes, compare a hotel to camping in a tent:D ), if it's flights then proximity to the airport and presumably to win you have to spend as little as possible.

Doesn't sound like much of a holiday:o . I don 't consider myself a spendthrift but like to save through the year to be able to not worry too much about spending but enjoy myself as much as I can in as much comfort as I can.

Good luck with it anyway.

Tojo_Ralph · 19 April 2008 at 10:41PM

LesD wrote: »

This must go down as the dampest squib thread of all time.

Edinburghlass wrote: »

Well we can't have that can we .

Wanna bet?

dmg24 · 20 April 2008 at 2:22AM

Last year several of us had completely free holidays, or ones that cost 2p!

On the Easyjet DTD Guarantee, I got a freebie hotel in Marrakech and a v cheap hotel in Paris.

On the Easyjet Spin the Wheel promotion, numerous MSEers got freebies or v cheap holidays.

If you are going to award prizes, then unless anybody can beat the freebies, I nominate myself, TBeckett100, jmarko, budgetflyer, Glenn the Baker ... and I'm sure even more names could be added to the list!

Tojo_Ralph · 24 April 2008 at 4:02AM

dmg24 wrote: »

If you are going to award prizes, then unless anybody can beat the freebies, I nominate myself, TBeckett100, jmarko, budgetflyer, Glenn the Baker ... and I'm sure even more names could be added to the list!

Don't forget to let us all know what you thought of the prize.

Voyager2002 · 24 April 2008 at 10:57AM

think that the point of this thread is to find examples of holidays that were (a) good value for money and (b) cost significantly less than most people would expect. In this spirit, I offer our trip to Switzerland in February 2007. Two adults; two teenagers; eight days; total cost 800 pounds. That figure includes:
rail travel between our home in Exeter and London airports, taking advantage of several dodges highlighted on the rail ticket thread on this site;
flights on BA between London and Zurich. We got absurdly low fares by flying out of Gatwick and back to Heathrow, and bought the tickets on the American Airlines site rather than BA (another dodge I learned from MSE);
an apartment beside the river in the heart of Luzern that we rented for a week through a Swiss on-line agency, and a hotel close to Zurich airport for the last night;
rail passes that allowed us to explore much of the country, riding on the Glacier Express, taking cable cars up mountains, and even getting free entry to the castle at Chillon;
all food and drink. Most of our meals were bought from local shops and eaten as picnics on trains, although we cooked most evenings (or apartment had a fully-equipped kitchen with dishwasher). We did have one excellent restaurant meal. And plenty of snacks on hot drinks in various places.

I can't beat the story in the first response, but we had a good time without exploiting loop-holes, and I think that the providers of the services we used were also content with the deal and made some kind of profit from our business.

Cheapest Holiday Champagne Contest

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