The Holiday Planner

They say that holidays are a major cause of stress, along with moving house or divorce, so by the time you read this I may well have been fairly stressed, since I will have just returned from a short break with some of my family. If the holiday proves to be as stressful as the process we went through booking it, then I may be very stressed indeed, although I hope not.

Someone has to stay to look after the hamster...

A few weeks ago we decided to book a short break since Val had some leave to take and Sarah had finished her exams. Rebecca could not get time off work and had a dressage competition at her riding school anyway, so was deputed to stay at home and mind the hamster. Our destination of choice was The Canary Islands, selected on the basis of our preconception that the weather is always decent there. It is one of those places that we instinctively feel will have good weather all year round, so we looked at hotels and flights to Tenerife. One of the great advances in booking holidays these days is the internet. Unlike years ago when booking holidays, and particularly booking flights, had to be done through a travel agent, at whose mercy one largely was, booking a flight and a hotel independently is just a few clicks away. This is both a blessing and a curse. The trade off is between the ease and speed and the sometimes impetuous nature of one's booking. We congratulated ourselves that within a matter of minutes we had booked a hotel in Tenerife and flights from Stansted with Ryanair.[1] We congratulated ourselves for the efficient and stress free experience of booking our holiday and sat back and began to start thinking about what we would do once we got to the resort, which is when things began to go awry.

Sarah, who is rarely without a laptop, smartphone or tablet to hand, looked at the weather forecast for Tenerife for the duration of our trip, something that perhaps we ought to have done before clicking away at airline and hotel websites in such a cavalier fashion. She reported that the weather was going to be, how can I put this, indifferent during our break, that is to say overcast with some rain and temperatures no higher than at home. Doubts set in. Were we doing the right thing? Should we have looked at other resorts? Should be cancel or change our plans? Indeed, could be cancel or change our plans? Why was the weather not as good as we expected? That last question could be answered by looking at historical weather statistics for Tenerife, which showed that in winter there was a big difference between there and home, but as the summer approached the difference was less marked and in June not much different at all, and given the respective forecasts for home and our destination this week, actually better at home.

Faced with the prospect of this...

...we chose somewhere that hopefully will look like this.

This was when serious doubts set in and we began to consider alternatives, if indeed there were any. Which in itself is something that one probably would not have contemplated in pre-internet days. I cannot imagine even considering going back to a travel agent less than a week before the departure date to try and change one's holiday, but now it is doable, albeit at a cost. In fact pre-internet one would not even have thought of it because either one would not have known about or even have tried to find out about the weather and would have arrived in the resort and made the best of whatever the weather was; I know I have had to do that many times in years gone by.

So, to the alternatives and much of it depended on what Ryanair would do and particularly if they flew to whichever destination we chose as an alternative to Tenerife. I cannot begin to describe the convoluted conversations, considerations of alternatives and sometimes outlandish different solutions we chewed over, which included Greece, Egypt and Dubai to name but three. In the end we found that Ryanair had flights available to Cyprus for the period we wanted to travel. Next we located a hotel in Paphos that fitted the bill. Now came the tricky bit. Obviously one doesn't want to book the flights and then find that the hotel is fully booked; equally one doesn't want to book the hotel and find that there are no flights available. As it transpired, we managed to book both and cancel our original hotel booking with only a minimal charge. The new flights cost a little more than the originals and of course Ryanair added their admin fee, a fee which many people complain about. The popular press and their websites abound with people complaining about being  "ripped off"  by Ryanair when the fact is that the company are quite upfront about the fact that they charge low fares and high prices for extras or amendments.

The budget airlines and the internet have been responsible for majors changes to the way we take holidays. No longer are holiday makers at the mercy of the travel agents; being able to book direct with hotels and airlines has revolutionised holidaymaking and it is now the norm (on short haul flights at least) for passengers to take only hand luggage. There is of course always that air of tension when approaching check in with hand luggage: will it fit the airline's restrictions? Yes, you measured and weighed it before you left home but somehow the airline's measure often seems a bit stingier. On more than one occasion I have seen passengers reconfiguring their luggage at the gate!

Recent news suggests that our hand luggage may have to shrink in future, however. Currently there is quite a variation in the sizes airlines will accept, from BA's 56 x 45 x 25cm to Ryanair's 55 x 40 x 20cm or Wizz Air's 42 x 32 x 25cm. Now the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has come up with an "optimum" for cabin luggage of  55 x 35 x 20cm, which it says will mean that "theoretically everyone should have a chance to store their carry-on bags on board aircraft of 120 seats or larger". Good on the one hand that regardless of airline one would know what size bag one can take and good that you would know it could be stored in the overhead locker but not so good if your currently valid luggage is all too big. IATA cannot enforce the changes but I imagine that luggage makers and retailers would welcome the move and would be rubbing their hands together thinking about extra sales and extra profits.

I'm off to find a bag that meets Ryanair's size restrictions and to pack it. Hopefully this holiday won't be as stressful as the booking process. I'll let you know in a week or so!

NB: This blog was first published 16th June 2015

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[1] I know a lot of people can scarcely find a good word to say for Ryanair, but (touch wood) our experiences have been universally positive.