Booking Cottage Holidays in the UK

Andy_Vic

The Internet has several agencies listing thousands of cottages across the UK – but if you book through the agents you will pay the list price plus a booking fee for the agent (they don’t give the owners details so you can’t book with the owners directly). There's also an extra fee if you pay by credit card. Browse through the listings until you find a cottage you want and then do a further internet search for the name of the property and the place where it is situated – eg "Tulip Cottage Kendal" (doesn’t exist – just a name I made up). You may well find that the owners have their own website and you can then book directly with them – thus avoiding the agents booking fee. You may also be able to negotiate a better price than the one publicised. We recently booked a fortnight’s holiday during June / July in this way and not only did we avoid £56 in agency fees but the property owner gave us £100 discount for booking the fortnight directly with him – we’ve thus paid £400 for a fortnight’s holiday in a country cottage rather than £556 – a saving of about 28%.

black-saturn

Great idea, thanks :beer:

Murphy_The_Cat

Andy_Vic wrote:

The Internet has several agencies listing thousands of cottages across the UK – but if you book through the agents you will pay the list price plus a booking fee for the agent (they don’t give the owners details so you can’t book with the owners directly). There's also an extra fee if you pay by credit card. Browse through the listings until you find a cottage you want and then do a further internet search for the name of the property and the place where it is situated – eg "Tulip Cottage Kendal" (doesn’t exist – just a name I made up). You may well find that the owners have their own website and you can then book directly with them – thus avoiding the agents booking fee. You may also be able to negotiate a better price than the one publicised. We recently booked a fortnight’s holiday during June / July in this way and not only did we avoid £56 in agency fees but the property owner gave us £100 discount for booking the fortnight directly with him – we’ve thus paid £400 for a fortnight’s holiday in a country cottage rather than £556 – a saving of about 28%.

Great idea Andy_Vic

That must be a record for money saving in a first post !!

I've followed your suggestion and saved myself £85.00

Thanks

MTC