Enjoy your travel!

After two years of restrictions, foreign travel has opened up again and many of us will be hoping for an overseas holiday this year. Whether your idea of a summer break is hiking in the alps, camping in the Dordogne, visiting cities, or the sun, sea, and sand of the Mediterranean, going abroad on holiday is an exciting prospect which many of us look forward to for months in advance.

When it comes to holidays and travel, we tend to know what we can afford when we begin to plan our summer trip. However, all too often it is the “extra” costs we hadn’t initially considered that can cause us problems.

Here we provide a few tips to help ensure you remember your next holiday break for all the right reasons, and not because unforeseen costs mean you are still paying for your holiday long after any suntan has faded.

Tip 1: Ensure you are insured

With there still being a great deal of uncertainty surrounding Covid-19, ensuring you have travel insurance in place to cover that and other holiday related eventualities is more crucial than ever. Whilst it is possible to get a travel insurance policy cheaply, it’s only by reading through what it covers that you can be sure you have adequate travel insurance in place, and as with a lot of things, you get what you pay for. Make sure the travel insurance policy you select has adequate cover in the event you, or one of your party, cannot travel because of covid. Also, if you are planning to travel outside of the EU if you live in an EU country, or into the EU if you live out of it, routine and emergency healthcare may cost you a lot of money if you don’t have insurance in place to cover the cost, so ensure you have adequate cover in place for it, as well as holiday cancellation, delays, personal injury, the loss or theft of your possessions, money, passport and the whole range of potential risks you face when traveling abroad that you might not consider during your normal day-to-day life. People often only find out what their travel insurance covers when they have to make a claim. However, with a little bit of forward planning and preparation, it’s possible to ensure that any mishaps on holiday don’t have to spoil it, or leave you with a big bill to pay when you get home.

Tip 2: Manage your holiday money

Even if you book an all-inclusive package holiday, you’ll undoubtedly want additional money to spend during your holiday. The world of banking has moved on a great deal from when your only option was to take cash or travelers cheques, and it is now possible to pay for things when you are abroad in the same way you do at home. This includes by using your phone, payment apps, and debit and credit card. Whilst these methods provide convenience, and remove the risk of carrying all your holiday funds around in cash, check with your bank and payment provider before you travel to ensure you won’t face additional charges or poor exchange rates by using them abroad, as they can push the cost of holiday spending through the roof!

Also, whilst convenience is great, be aware that the temptation to spend increases dramatically on holiday, as many of us feel we deserve additional treats. As a result, convenience and additional costs can quickly dent budgets and make holidays more expensive than planned.

One alternative is to use a “prepaid travel card” which you can load up (either with your home currency or the local currency in your holiday destination) and then use as you would a debit card at home. Using a prepaid travel card means you will always know how much of your budget you have left to spend, and by loading it with local currency at the outset you can also lock-in the exchange rate giving you greater certainty.

Tip 3: Travel around your travels

When people book a holiday, their initial focus is usually on the flights they will take and where they will stay. This is only natural. After all, if you are traveling halfway across the continent (or the world), knowing how you will get there and where you will be staying are hugely important! Nonetheless, unless airport transfers are included in a package holiday, or you live, and are staying, within a train or bus ride of the airports, plus your flights are at “train and bus friendly” times, getting to and from airports can add hundreds of Euros to the cost of a holiday.

The answer is, therefore, to plan ahead. If you need to drive and park at the airport, you can usually get cheaper parking if you pre-book. If you need to hire a car, the same applies. If you decide you are going to use taxis, likewise. Some resort type hotels also provide transfer services if you book in advance, so it’s well worth doing your research. Travel review sites and social media can be a great source of information and advice for onward travel from airports.

Tip 4: Avoiding the cost of keeping connected

Many of us live our lives on our phones, and this is often no different on holiday. You may be the kind of person who posts pictures for your social media followers, checks your bank account to monitor holiday spending, or just chats to family or friends to tell them about your adventures. Whatever you do with your phone, using it abroad can sometimes be costly if overseas use isn’t part of your package.

So, before you travel, check with your mobile phone provider whether “international roaming” is included in your package. With some mobile phone providers, it is included at no additional costs which means you can call, text and use data as you would at home. For others though, “international roaming” may not be included but can be activated for an additional monthly, or daily, charge. 

Either way, by checking before you depart you can be sure that you can stay in touch with the world whilst you are away, without the risk of it potentially costing you more than your holiday!