Don't accept anything less - persistence pays off (part 1)

This Blog post was initially going to be entitled 'Why I won't be booking with Thomas Cook again' (I know, snappy, right?). I'm glad to say I've had cause to amend it before I even started writing it, so perhaps instead this post can serve as a case study for similar situations. I should probably start by saying that, believe it or not, I'm not a complainer. If you pop across to Trip Advisor and look at my reviews (vix17 - very original!), you'll see that they're mostly very positive and, I believe, fair. I think to a large extent that life is what you make it, and a positive attitude goes a long way towards making that life a happy one. Is it really worth spoiling a holiday by concentrating on the small patch of damp in the corner of the bathroom? I think not. However, when you genuinely have something to complain about, particularly when that thing should have been avoidable, I think you are well within your rights to expect an apology, a refund or whatever else may fit that particular situation. I don't like it when I perceive things as being unfair - when you don't get what you have been promised, for example, or if people in the same situation are treated differently. These are the sorts of situations where I feel the urge to put pen to paper - and once I get started, I have trouble stopping. But it really is worth doing - I have found that a carefully-worded letter, a reasonable request and the refusal to accept anything less then what you are asking for usually gets the results you're after. Take Thomas Cook, for example...

Back in the olden days, before the internet and before I got travel-savvy, we always booked our holidays through tour operators. We continued to do this when the children were babies - the services of a rep felt reassuring somehow, and it was good to know we weren't on our own if something happened. Our favourite was always Thomas Cook, as they usually worked out cheaper; we were also very pleased with the way in which they handled the ash cloud crisis back in 2010. We were staying in Lanzarote at the time, and ended up stuck there for nearly a week longer. I say 'stuck', but it certainly didn't feel like that - we were able to stay on at our hotel on the same board (AI, thankfully) plus miss a week of work, so we actually enjoyed the whole experience. The rep worked tirelessly, keeping everyone at the hotel up-to-date and dealing professionally with the moaners - we really couldn't fault Thomas Cook at all. In fact, so pleased were we that I sent them a letter of thanks - after all, people are always quick to put pen to paper to complain, and I felt it was important to redress that balance. Over the years, however, as the children increased in age and we increased in confidence in our ability to look after ourselves, we realised just how much cheaper it is to book holidays independently. We booked flights and hotels separately and dispensed with the services of reps and tour operators. However, last year we found ourselves going back to Thomas Cook for a holiday to Tenerife.

I booked the holiday online some time ahead. After confirming the price and inputting my details, I was given two payment options: either pay a small deposit and the rest nearer the time, or pay the balance in full straightaway and receive a bonus £50 in local currency. Now, if you have enough money in your account, this is a no-brainer (as it would also be, to be fair, if you didn't have enough money in your account). Normally, I'd just pay the deposit and leave the rest in my account to gather a teeny bit of interest. However, it would have had to be a bloody amazing holiday to gather enough interest to beat the £50 offer, so I opted to pay in full. I added my card details, went through to the confirmation page and looked to see how to claim my £50. And then I looked a bit harder. No, nothing. No mention whatsoever of my £50. It did, however, say that my travel documents would be emailed to me, so I assumed (optimistically) that my £50 would arrive at the same time. Shortly afterwards, I got a receipt emailed to me with a promise of my e-tickets within 48 hours. But no £50. It'll come with the e-tickets, I thought. Eventually, after about a week, I got another email - another receipt. Er, where were my tickets? And, more importantly, where was my £50?! I went on to the website and found that getting hold of customer services was a lengthy process - I could fill in an essay-length email form or spend a fortune (in time as well as money) on the phone. But then I spotted the chat option. I found myself chatting online to a helpful lady who was able to send me the e-tickets I should have already received. However, she knew nothing about the £50 - she didn't know anything about the offer nor how I could claim it. It seems the chat people are limited in their powers to actually do anything - she suggested I phoned them. 'Is it a freephone number?' I asked. Er, no. Then wouldn't it slightly defeat the object to spend money on a phone call for the sake of claiming money? Her only other suggestion was to call into my nearest branch and see if they could sort it out. I finished the chat feeling somewhat dejected. It wasn't exactly convenient to go into the branch. And I hadn't actually got any proof of the offer - an offer that the chat lady had no idea about. I did still plan to go in and try to claim what was rightfully mine, but I didn't get a chance for a while. And then I forgot. And then, by the time I remembered, I felt that too much time had passed. Yup, Miss Complain-when-something-isn't-fair gave up. But that was just the first part of this story...

Beautiful Bruges - and the Novotel Brugge Centrum

As per my last blog, we had a weekend in Bruges just before Christmas, and I'd recommend it as a mini-break destination, especially at this time of year. It's much closer than you imagine it to be - just over an hour's drive from Calais. And it really is a beautiful destination - amazing architecture, lovely canals, museums and medieval buildings.

 

We managed to fit in a visit to the Historium, the Salvador Dali exhibition, the chocolate museum and the cathedral, as well as a boat trip on the canals and a large amount of exploring. There's lots more for families to do that we didn't have time to fit in - plus, of course, hundreds of different beers to drink (and don't get me started on the chocolate...).

And while the December weather limits you slightly, it also brings with it Christmas markets, an ice rink in the main square and beautiful Christmas lights and decorations everywhere.

If you fancy trying Bruges and are looking for somewhere to stay (particularly as a family), then I'd definitely recommend the Novotel Brugge Centrum, where we stayed. Here's my cut-and-paste review from Trip Advisor:

We stayed as a family of four in the Novotel for a weekend break in December, and I really can't fault it. Firstly, hotel prices in Bruges are not cheap - and while the prices at this hotel might not be cheap in themselves, they certainly represent good value for Bruges, particularly when booking far enough in advance. The children stayed free in a superior room and had breakfast free if the adults paid for it, which made the hotel particularly good value for families. The location is very good - in the centre of town and an easy walk to the bell tower and the other sights, and probably a ten-minute walk to the train station. If coming by car, it is easy to find and there is an underground public car park right next to the hotel, where parking costs 8 or 9 Euros a day. The room is a reasonable size, and we found the beds perfectly comfortable. The toilet is separate from the bathroom, and there are toiletries, a hairdryer, TV, mini-bar (which just contained water) and a free safe. There is also free Wi-Fi throughout the hotel, which was a bonus. There is a door between the bedroom and the hall area outside the bathroom, which means that parents have somewhere to sit other than the bathroom once the children are in bed! The breakfast offered plenty of choice (hot and continental) and was all very nice. We also ate dinner in the hotel restaurant one evening, and the food was delicious. The staff were really what made the hotel - everyone was very friendly, both at reception and in the restaurant - and made us feel welcome as a family. You can often be made to feel uncomfortable bringing children to a city hotel, but the children were given a gift at check-in and again at dinner, and there was an area for children to play in the reception (and also outdoors, but it was too cold!), with an impressive computer 'table' and an X-Box. We would certainly stay in this hotel again, and would wholeheartedly recommend it to other families looking for a hotel in Bruges.

Here's a video of our room in the Novotel Brugge Centrum. You can visit my YouTube channel (Holiday Obsessive) for more holiday-related videos (with more to be uploaded soon...).

Location, location, location

I like where I live. For those that don't know me personally, that's in a little village in Kent in the south-east of England. I don't just like the village itself - although I do like it, very much - I like the actual position of the village. I'm surrounded by beautiful countryside, much of it walkable from my front door, yet a main town - well, city, actually - is just a couple of miles away (also walkable if I had to!). If I go north, east or south, I'll reach a coastline - I have the choice of sand or pebbles, plus some beautiful white-chalk cliffs. And if I go west - north-west to be precise - just 60 miles away are all the sights and sounds of London. Okay, so we haven't got moors or mountains, but we have got the best of most worlds. A stroll through fields to a country pub? Check. Day at the beach, building sandcastles? Check. Quick visit to town for some shopping? Check. Bracing cliff-top walk? Check. Castles and cathedrals, museums and monuments, woods and wildlife parks, cinemas and soft-play - most things that you want can be found within a 20-mile radius of where I live. Living close to our capital city also brings a host of benefits - just a relatively short drive or less than an hour on the fast train means that it's easy to pop to London for the day or for the weekend. It's easy for us to see all the tourist sites and then some. It's also easy to see a West End show or a concert at one of the wide variety of venues London has to offer. And have I mentioned the weather? Generally speaking, the south-east is pretty lucky - we're in a little pocket that usually gets ignored when bad weather hits the rest of the UK. Obviously we don't always get off scot-free - we had some 'interesting' flooding last year. But we are usually warmer than a lot of the country - right now, it's a beautiful sunny day, while large amounts of the country are covered in snow.

So how does this relate to holidays? If I like where I live so much, why do I keep escaping it? Well, that's another reason I like it so much. I've already mentioned the ease of a short break in London. It's also simple to get to Sussex, one of my favourite UK counties - lots of beautiful coast and tons to do for children. Admittedly it's not best-located for most of the rest of the UK; to get out of Kent, hitting the M25 is almost unavoidable - and anyone who's been on the M25 knows it's akin to sitting in your driveway with the engine running for an hour. But outside the UK? Well, that's a different story. We have five airports within relatively easy reach. Sadly, none of them are that close (RIP the so-convenient-but-never-quite-took-off Manston Airport), but Gatwick and Stansted are both just over an hour away. We also have Heathrow or Luton not too much further (depending on the state of the M25, of course) or the as-yet-untested-but-may-be-useful-one-day London City. The joy of this is that we can go pretty much anywhere we want without having to worry about connecting flights, and we get far more choice over flight times and prices. Often, one airport works out cheaper than the others or has better flight times, and lots of airlines (budget ones in particular), only fly to/from certain airports or only to limited destinations from some of these airports. Having Heathrow, the country's main airport, nearby is particularly useful for long-haul destinations, as flying from many other UK airports would involve a domestic flight to Heathrow first.

But the real pull of our location is our proximity to France; we're less than half an hour away from Dover, and it's only 20 miles from there to Calais. Admittedly, that's still an hour and a half on the ferry, but that's not so much different to getting the (slow) train to London. It's a much easier way to go abroad than flying - no parking problems, quick check-in, no hanging around, and it's much quicker to get to Dover than Gatwick. The Eurotunnel is even quicker, and the Eurostar quicker still - although the prices increase accordingly. Still, it's pretty amazing to be able to get on a train in Ashford and be in Paris a couple of hours later! But back to the ferries - we're lucky enough to be fairly frequent winners of ferry tickets (and there's another blog story), which means the ferry is usually our transport of choice. And, once in France, the rest of Europe is easily reachable - less than an hour to Belgium, and the Netherlands aren't much further. The ability to pop across to the continent for the day or a weekend is a pretty good one to have. Recently, we realised we had a few ferry vouchers to use up before they expired, so we scheduled in a day-trip to Boulogne, managing a visit to Nausicaa, lunch, a play on the beach and a walk around town, and were still home for dinner. A couple of weeks later we went to Bruges for a lovely Christmassy weekend. I feel so lucky that such trips are relatively easy for us to do. We're also lucky enough to usually have the time over the summer to drive down to Spain, taking our time by stopping frequently throughout France - and Monaco, Andorra, Luxembourg... Of course, you could do it much more quickly if you had less time, and you'd save an absolute fortune on flights.

This summer, we're planning to capitalise on our location and head to France again, probably driving down to Spain and perhaps even visiting Italy. And in the meantime, just a stone's throw away, we have Canterbury - famous for its cathedral; Dover - famous for its castle and white cliffs; Margate - famous for its sandy beaches; Whitstable - famous for its oysters... Living here, I really do feel that the world is my oyster.