The year-end tends to swing around and catch us by surprise every time! But it’s not too late to plan out the holiday that you deserve. Whether you’re unravelling after a challenging year on your own, reconnecting with your partner or getting away with the whole family, everyone can use some tips on making the best holiday bookings. Here is our guide to booking holiday accommodation:
Start with the experience
This may seem obvious but starting with the kind of holiday experience you want helps narrow things down and makes researching so much simpler. So, what does ‘start with the experience’ mean? There are two parts to it – firstly affecting your location, and then how you budget for your holiday.
Location is important and part of what makes this point so obvious – if you’re looking forward to dipping your toes in the ocean, then of course you need to book near the coast. But you also need to ensure you prioritise this experience in your budget – there’s little point in blowing your holiday fund just getting to the destination or hiring equipment if it leaves you very little to enjoy the actual experience.
Let’s say you’d like to try kite surfing, for example. You know you need to be near a beach, but Durban is crowded and most likely going to be pricey around this time of year. By ‘starting with the experience’, you know to prioritise your budget on being out on the water for as long as possible and this could help you think of many other coastal towns to visit and kite surf at rather.
Make sure you’re comfortable
The downside to booking a rental property is that you’re putting a lot of faith into your accommodation’s photos being truthful. When it comes to something as important as holiday accommodation, we wouldn’t want to risk it. Even across our four brands of hotels, you can rest assured knowing that we go out of our way to care for you and make you feel at home. Being comfortable and safe, even if it’s just for one night on your way to your destination, would be the difference between relaxing on your holiday and becoming even more stressed!
Timing is important
Anyone who has tried to squeeze in some last-minute holiday shopping will agree – things can be a bit crazy around year-end. This makes your timing critical. Let’s take December for example – crowds fluctuate between the 16th and the 31st, but if you were able to book before or after, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll miss most of the crowds. This obviously isn’t true of every popular spot, so it’s important to research and gauge when the best time to book is compared to when you can get off work.
Shop for deals
Black Friday deals aside, year-end is full of specials to take advantage of. Whether it be in-store promotions, specials on fun experiences, free entry for kids or, indeed, accommodation deals that make your holidays that much more affordable. Shopping around never hurts, and we’ve always got something up our sleeves.
Allow buffers
This is another one of those points which can apply to a few different things. For one thing, allow time buffers over the holidays – those crowds gotta get where they’re going somehow, and it’s normally in a car in front of you. So, when planning what time you’ll arrive anywhere, be sure to leave a generous buffer.
The whole point of your holiday is to destress a bit, so being anxious about arriving on time and feeling stressed in traffic won’t help that at all. Next, put a money buffer in place to help you budget for the holidays too. You may be strolling the streets and see something you have to have, or the perfect gift for someone or just a generous tip for service providers working while everyone else is holiday-making. Adding a buffer to your budget will help Janu-worry be a thing of the past while still enjoying yourself on holiday.
With all of that said, you’re now an expert on booking holiday accommodation – so get booking!