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Compare offers from travel companies, then book your holiday with children and save money

If you are the kind of person that buys 50 ml of parfum for €43.95 just because you like the store's name or its staff, while a discount market next door offers 90 ml for €39.95, this is not the page for you. If you like to puzzle, plan and compare offers on packages holidays from travel companies and are able and willing to shift your holiday one or two days and can choose a different airport of departure, you should continue reading. You are about to save a lot of money to spend on your holiday destination for hiring a car or buy yourself a souvenir.
Nowadays countless internet sites help you to compare package holidays and let you select and book the cheapest one. We use Holidaycheck.de for years. For the three of us living that close to the border of different countries, it is easy to choose an airport abroad to start our holiday. Most of our holidays start from railway station Herzogenrath, district Aachen, Germany. We took off from airports like Cologne, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt and in 2010 Stuttgart and Dortmund will be added to this list.

On holiday to hotel Venüs, Titreyengöl, Turkey

Stuttgart is departure airport for our autumn holiday 2010. Destination is Turkey and we are going to stay in Venüs hotel in Titreyengöl, about 6 km from Side and Manavgat. One evening at the beginning of January, after some searching and comparing, we found the package at a price of €899,- for all three of us. The holiday was even going to last a day longer, starting on Monday and returning on Tuesday a week later.
The chart below shows you the "offers" from German travel company FTI, GTI and Urlaubstours. Same hotel, same period, same airport. Depending on your choice you are about to save €218,-.

The following chart, showing the price departing from Düsseldorf International airport, is even more shocking. A price difference of €690,- for your package holiday.

In 2008 we selected all inclusive package holiday in hotel Neptun in Tučepi in Dalmatia, our favourite region in Croatia. The price for the package holiday for the three of us, two parents and an 8 years old daughter, was €1609,-. Travel company was I.D. Riva Tours Deutschland, the travel specialist for Croatia. The webmaster however remembered the name Riva Tours from the brochure with activities and discount holidays he receives annually as a staff member of KPN. So he made a phone call. After explaining the gentle woman what flight dates and accommodation we had in mind. After computing things together, including 10% staff discount, the price was still €2350,-. This had not changed in the past 2 years as the image on the right side shows. The image on the left side shows the price for two weeks all inclusive in hotel, if you book via the German "equivalent" of travel company Neptun, except that you are going to keep more than €600,- in your pocket. For a lot of families this is an amount of money which enables them to afford a holiday or not. If you feel uncomfortable entering your credit card number on the website of Holidaycheck or German Rail, which we do no longer worry about, you can still print the offer and take or fax it to your favourite travel agency, if it represents German travel companies. In 2008 we still printed the offer and send it to our travel agency. The employee of travel agency Euroconseil in Landgraaf informed us that we could even take 2 more children along with us on this holiday, but the webmaster answered that wouldn't be possible from a biological point of view with only 6 months to go.


The price differences of course still exist, as both screen prints show. If you travel from Germany, taking off from Frankfurt airport, the very same holiday is more than €600,- cheaper, compared to the German's neighbours in the Netherlands, that take off from Schiphol airport, Amsterdam.

Great all this saving and discount stuff, but how do I get to Frankfurt airport? Or Stuttgart? Dortmund? And how much will that cost? That's what the next section of this page is about.

An online German Rail ticket at lowest fare - no parking fees for your car at the airport

In the past years we found out that it is a good thing to make up your mind which is going to be the country that you would choose to for your holiday. After some time we concluded that for us Holidaycheck.de is the website that we were going to use in the future to compare a hotel offered by different tour operators. Holidaycheck.de of course we are living almost on the Dutch German border, which makes it easy for us to reach an Airport in Germany within a couple of hours. We mostly prefer to travel by train to the airport. Happy day ticket NRW from German Rail, remember? One day, 5 people, all over Germany. This way you don't need to pay an expensive parking fee.
In 2008 we departed from Frankfurt Airport. Not just around the corner, so we would like to get there a little faster and searched German Rail's website for connections. We found some great offers: high speed, low price. Departure railway station was Herzogenrath on the other side of the Dutch German Border, only 20 minutes walking from Kerkrade market square. To give you an impression about how much money you could save if you would explore the website of German Rail, we give you an example and comparison, supposing we would depart from Frankfurt Airport and the destination was going to be Split Airport in Croatia. Date of departure April 24 2010 and date of return May 08 2010. Two adults and a child don't have to pay more than €84,- for a return ticket. The ICE train is taking us there in about 4 hours. Click on the image to view the whole page about the offer from German Rail.
Keep in mind that your return flight from your holiday might have some delay, so plan your travel home by train from the airport with some space. In most train connections your seat is reserved, so you you depend on the train you book. If you miss it you have to book a new one, which will most likely be expensive.

 

© Jos van der Burgt