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Wednesday, 6 August 2014

A step up in the world

I first got the holiday bug aged sixteen, when I went with my best friend to stay with her sister on the Greek island of Mykonos for three weeks. It was the first time I'd been abroad, first time on a plane and, unsurprisingly, the first time I'd been away without an 'adult'. It obviously sparked something, because the next year I went to Amsterdam, Tenerife and twice to Paris (those are the ones I remember). I think this set a precedent, because I've gone on holiday at least four or five times a year ever since - gradually to more 'luxurious' destinations and then, soon after having the kids, on cheaper options. The 'holidays' vary wildly in terms of destination, duration and accommodation - from a night away for a wedding or a five-day city break to a fortnight on a Spanish beach or five weeks travelling round Australia. The point is, by my estimation, I've gone on at least 100 holidays since my childhood. And on all those holidays, prior to this year, have I ever been upgraded? The answer, as far as I can remember, is a big fat no! Of course, some of those holidays - camping, staying with friends - wouldn't have given me the option to upgrade. And, (very) occasionally, we've paid for the upgrade ourselves. But the other 80+ holidays (I'm guessing wildly at numbers here)? Not a hope! I suppose the closest we've ever come was the year we got married (not our honeymoon, I hasten to add, when we didn't even get so much as a bottle of wine for being newlyweds!) - we booked a week in Crete and, a week or so before we were due to go, we got a letter saying that our hotel would be closed due to lack of demand, so they had moved us to another hotel. The new hotel had an extra star compared to the original so, technically, it was an upgrade. But it wasn't the hotel we booked, they obviously didn't have any choice in the matter, and it might not actually have been any nicer - therefore it doesn't count. 

Anyway, back to this year. It started with Butlins. There are three basic standards of apartment - bronze, silver and gold. We booked silver, as is our usual plan of action - not wanting the most basic option but not being willing to splash out on the luxuries - in this case, towels, a dishwasher, a DVD player, housekeeping and priority parking and check-in. Oh, and slightly posher decor, apparently. We arrived at the check-in counter to be told we'd been randomly selected for an upgrade to a gold apartment. Woohoo! Actually, it wasn't quite as good as it sounded - we'd already missed out on the priority parking and check-in for a start. The DVD player wasn't much use, as we hadn't brought any DVDs. The dishwasher would have been lovely, but we ate out every night, and there wasn't much point using it for just breakfast bowls. We took advantage of the housekeeping just once - they came so early, while we were still getting up, that we told them not to worry. We did use the towels (and complimentary toiletries!) - but it would have been useful to know we'd have them ahead of packing our own! Anyway, whatever - we had an upgrade and I was chuffed. 

Roll on a couple of weeks to a girlie break at Champneys. We arrived to be told we'd been upgraded to a superior (or deluxe or executive or whatever the word was) room. I'm not entirely sure what this gave us that you couldn't get in a standard room. We decided it was probably the ground floor location, which gave us our own little terrace with comfy chairs overlooking the weir. I'd known in advance (from trusty Trip Advisor) that the building was undergoing renovations, as people were moaning about the noise. Personally, I was grateful for the building work - we didn't hear any noise but did get an upgrade out of it!

Move on less than two months to our current adventure. At the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Hong Kong, we were told on arrival that we had been upgraded to a grand deluxe room, which, we were told, was bigger than our previous room. Lee's first comment as we walked in was 'How small was the original room?!' The grand deluxe room was not particularly grand in terms of size. However, Hong Kong rooms are notoriously small, and I'd consistently read reviews on Trip Advisor moaning about the size of the rooms in our hotel. Our grand deluxe room was a perfectly reasonable size, which is pretty big in Hong Kong terms. Plus it was kind of deluxe - it had clearly been newly renovated, and everything looked clean, new and luxurious. And an upgrade was a very good start to our holiday! 

The good luck carried on at our next stop. Our first accommodation in Australia was the Seashells in Scarborough, where we had booked a (superior!) two-bedroom apartment. We had to phone the day before, to confirm our arrival, where we were told we'd been upgraded to a three-bed Sandcastles Apartment. In Australia, we soon found that it was the opposite to Hong Kong - due to the abundance of space here, all the hotels and apartments are very spacious. So, as Brits, we were pretty excited when we arrived in our apartment. It wasn't brand spanking new, but it did have good facilities. More importantly, it was huge - bigger than most family houses in the UK. The kids had a bedroom each, which meant they both had a good night's sleep. They also had their own bathroom, as we had an en-suite. The lounge, kitchen and balcony were also very large (not to mention our jacuzzi corner bath). I don't know whether the three-bed apartment was also officially 'superior' - but the space alone was enough to impress us. 

Sadly, the upgrade luck hasn't continued since. To be fair, it would have been difficult - there was only one kind of apartment at the Ayer's Rock Resort, and we'd already booked deluxe rooms in Alice Springs. I'm still trying to get my head around how and why it's happened four times in two months, when it hadn't happened in over 20 years previously. I'm also desperately hoping that, just once, it will happen on a plane. Although I don't want to think about the other passengers' faces if we were to sit our kids down in business class...

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