Package holidays - do you have to stay in the hotel you choose?

blue_monkey_2

Hi all,

Rather an odd question but if I book a package holiday (flight & hotel) do I have to stay in the hotel that comes with the 'package'?

I have a timeshare week I would prefer to use (better hotel as we get an apartment & facilities) but can obviosuly use my Tesco Vouchers to book a holiday with Virgin because then I get the flights for free. If I did not stay at the hotel would this invalidate any of the tickets we buy for the parks in advance or the flights home.

Some advice would be cool. Thanks.

monkeyspanner

Don't see why it should. If transfers are included and you don't want them you would need to tell the rep on arrival that you don't need the transfer. Otherwise you have a coachload of people waiting whilst the reps look for you, had this happen to us recently and its very annoying!
You mention parks so I assume you are going to Florida/California. You would probably have to visit your booked hotel or the tour operators office to collect your tickets.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just get flights?

blue_monkey_2

Hi monkey,

Yes, did not think about that with the tickets, I guess we can buy out there. We want to go to Florida.

We have Tesco clubcard vouchers worth over £1.5k but with Virgin Holidays the kids either go free or for under £300 yet to get flights for them costs around £450 plus tax when we have been looking. I have a brochure now so it helps find the cheaper times of year as we are not tied to going school holiday times and don't want to go when it is too hot and busy anyway. So not really, works out cheaper to go with Virgin and then go off to the Timeshare resort when we get there. Alternatively though, thinking about it, we could stay in our other resort the first week and then go to the hotel the 2nd week and get 2 weeks holiday out of it.

Maybe I should call and ask them rather than assume. Many thanks for your help with this.

payless

something I'm planning on doing next year also.. the quality of the timeshares in Florida can be outstanding ( actually almost makes buying the t/s worthwhile) , and the value of tesco deals in Virgin holidays is great value

can't see any reason why it should not work.. although in politeness I would probably tell the reception of this "spare" hotel"plus ensure local virgin rep is aware of your change of plan .. in case they needed to contact you.

would have thought tckets were better value from other retailers anyway ( don't think you can use tesco deals on these extras)

Ali_UK

there's no reason at all why you can't do this, however I would make sure to call the Virgin office/local rep and confirm your homebound flight a few days before you go home just to make sure there are no changes!

jfdi

Please let the hotel know you're booked for, too.

Couple of years back we decided to go shopping en route from airport to hotel, had a meal & just tried not to 'waste' time by sleeping. By the time we got to hotel about 9pm they were just about to call the police! They thought we'd strayed into bad part of town or run off the road between Orlando airport & the hotel! Nice to know they cared!

A
xx

saveapenny

We have done it in Santorini ...we got a cheap package but only used the flight part and then found our own hotel. All I did was inform the rep at the airport so I would just inform the local office when you get there.