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How to get a cheaper tour overseas
ellanvannin_2
Posts: 84 Forumite
Hi All
We have just successfully been on a 24 day escorted coach tour of New Zealand with Scenic Tours http://www.scenictours.com/ and saved about £2,000 off the UK prices. We asked a friend who lives in NZ to enquire at his local travel agency to see if they could book the tour for us and pay in NZ$'s. They could, and we paid by credit card (Nationwide - one of the best for foreign transactions), saving us about £2,000 for a booking for 2 people (enough to pay our flights over to NZ and extra stopover nights in Singapore).
Scenic Tours are an Australian company and it could be that using an Australian travel agency and paying in AU$'s might have saved us even more! We'll never know.
We had no problems getting our documents as they were posted direct to us from Australia and our fellow passengers were mostly from the UK (two were Australian), i.e. no language problems, othern than accents;-)
I think the difference in pricing has something to do with exchange rates, VAT and expensive advertising here in the UK but that's only a guess.
Scenic Tours by the way are an excellent company and their Free Choice scheme is a brilliant idea with lots of extras built in price-wise and you just choose the elements that suit your individual preferences.
Possibly you could do a similar saving if touring, say, the USA and get someone in the States to check out details for you at their local travel agent. Do bear in mind though that an e-mail enquiry from you "out of the blue" will probably result in your e-mail not being responded to, as the agents won't want to waste their time dealing with someone unknown. That's why you should ask a resident of the country in question to enquire for you.
Good luck and hopefully you'll save oodles of dosh.
Regards
Kaye
We have just successfully been on a 24 day escorted coach tour of New Zealand with Scenic Tours http://www.scenictours.com/ and saved about £2,000 off the UK prices. We asked a friend who lives in NZ to enquire at his local travel agency to see if they could book the tour for us and pay in NZ$'s. They could, and we paid by credit card (Nationwide - one of the best for foreign transactions), saving us about £2,000 for a booking for 2 people (enough to pay our flights over to NZ and extra stopover nights in Singapore).
Scenic Tours are an Australian company and it could be that using an Australian travel agency and paying in AU$'s might have saved us even more! We'll never know.
We had no problems getting our documents as they were posted direct to us from Australia and our fellow passengers were mostly from the UK (two were Australian), i.e. no language problems, othern than accents;-)
I think the difference in pricing has something to do with exchange rates, VAT and expensive advertising here in the UK but that's only a guess.
Scenic Tours by the way are an excellent company and their Free Choice scheme is a brilliant idea with lots of extras built in price-wise and you just choose the elements that suit your individual preferences.
Possibly you could do a similar saving if touring, say, the USA and get someone in the States to check out details for you at their local travel agent. Do bear in mind though that an e-mail enquiry from you "out of the blue" will probably result in your e-mail not being responded to, as the agents won't want to waste their time dealing with someone unknown. That's why you should ask a resident of the country in question to enquire for you.
Good luck and hopefully you'll save oodles of dosh.
Regards
Kaye
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Comments
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Will bear that in mind.Thanks.0
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We did this with India several years ago. We booked our flights into Mumbai and out of Delhi and then had a tour made by a local Indian agent. We stayed at the Taj group of hotels, including the Lake Palace in Udaipur. We had a private escorted tour - just the 2 of us in an Ambassador car with the driver and guide. It included all hotels, transport, guide, sightseeing entrance fees etc and cost us £500 TOTAL for the 2 of us! We did it all direct by email and paid in US$. We saved a fortune on the UK booking tour prices! It certainly pays to do this.0
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Little_miss_neat wrote: »We did this with India several years ago. We booked our flights into Mumbai and out of Delhi and then had a tour made by a local Indian agent. We stayed at the Taj group of hotels, including the Lake Palace in Udaipur. We had a private escorted tour - just the 2 of us in an Ambassador car with the driver and guide. It included all hotels, transport, guide, sightseeing entrance fees etc and cost us £500 TOTAL for the 2 of us! We did it all direct by email and paid in US$. We saved a fortune on the UK booking tour prices! It certainly pays to do this.
which tour co :T was it please ?0
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