HOW TO BOOK YOUR FIRST CRUISE!

In case you haven’t heard, cruising is, and has been, the fastest growing trend in travel in recent years and yet despite all the hype and the promotion, less than 2% of Irish travellers have experienced one to date, according to CLIA, the professional trade body that represents all the main cruise lines. There are many reasons for this which broadly fall into the following three categories, so this week’s blog hopes to bring some

What is value and why is it more important than price? — Part 2

Take me for example: I don’t particularly like Ryanair or their customer ethos but I do acknowledge that they — and low cost carriers like them — revolutionised the international aviation industry and thus allowed more of us to travel, and more often. Whilst I do put a value on comfort and convenience, I also put an almost equal value on cost so when the price differential is high and the length of time that

Prediction is difficult — especially if it is about the future!

So said Neils Bohr, The famous Danish physicist. Indeed, predicting anything nowadays is particularly difficult, given the fast pace of change and the number of variables at play. Notwithstanding that fact, I am going to make one anyway and it’s this — cruising is going to be the next big thing in travel! Why do I say that? Because all the signs are there: the number of new ship builds scheduled over the next eight

What budgets reveal about how much we spend.

There have been several occasions in my life when money was tight and I had to literally count the pennies to make ends meet. Two of the things I had to discipline myself to do was work only with cash (the rationale being when it was gone, it was gone!) and record details of every single penny that was spent. What was interesting about those episodes was how easily money got frittered away in small,

What do you enjoy most about travelling?

It's different things for different people, isn't it? For some, it's the destinations themselves: the scenery, the city-scapes, the beaches. For others, it tends to be the culture and the history of each destination. The human interactions that we have with locals when we're abroad most likely features highly on most peoples' lists. For me, whilst all of the above are extremely important, I must confess that one of the highlights when I travel tends

Are you a fan of Downton Abbey?

If you’re like me, then you’re a sucker for period dramas such as Downton Abbey — the costumes, the characters, the luxury, the opulence etc. Sadly, it’s just make-believe TV,  but such dramas take their cue from the way that the upper classes actually lived. Now while the days of the Downton Abbey’s of this world are long gone, it is still possible to get a sense of what it must have been like to

Value for money is more important than getting the cheapest deal.

Now that we are all economically challenged, there is an understandable tendency to look out for the cheapest deals or packages in order to make our scarce euros go further but this is a mistake. Looking out for value-for-money deals is much more important in terms of getting more 'bang for your buck' and one of the consistently best sources of value-for-money deals is in cruising. Don't be put off by outmoded perceptions that cruising

The art of getting a quote that is both competitive in price and relevant to your needs starts with gathering all the right information about what you want to do (or think you want to do!).