Cheap travel offers for France
: tips and warnings
Cheap.
Or not so cheap? Don't be taken in !!
There are hundreds of sites out on the Internet, claiming to
offer you the "cheapest
fares",
the "best deals", the "lowest costs", and the best special offers. But
don't be taken in! Agencies and resellers
will offer you special deals, maybe, but since they are only offering
what the airlines and the ferry companies are offering in the first
place, there's a fair chance that you may end up paying more than
necessary for your trip. A lot of "cheapest deals" are certainly
not what they claim to be, and "low cost" airline tickets and ferry
tickets can be considerably more expensive than necessary, when booked
through a third-party site than when booked directly.
For instance, there are plenty of "cheap travel" or
"travel bargains" sites that only
propose flights, ferries, packages and hotel rooms from operators who
pay them a commission. They simply fail to mention services provided by
other operators, that may be cheaper, but on which they do not get a
commission.
And if you're wanting to book a flight last minute,
take note! Seats with so called "low cost" carriers may well turn out
to be more expensive than with established airlines. Whether you're
booking seats to France, Spain, Italy or wherever, the same is true.
In many cases, particularly for ferries and
hotels, but sometimes for flights too, you'll find that the best prices can be
had by booking directly
with the operator (see below for direct links
to operators websites), and by doing so as early as possible. And if you book
directly, then there's no chance of losing your booking when some
internet booking agency goes bust, as happened last year with more than
one....
Don't be fooled by the "50%
discount"
scam ! What does 50% off actually mean?.... 50% off what? You can find plenty of "cheap hotel" sites on Internet offering
such apparent bargains as "up to 50% off".... or even more. But read
the small print; it's "up to
50%" ! not "50%"! That could mean just 5%.... or nothing at all.
Sometimes hotel reseller sites will offer you "50% off full room
rates"..... forgetting to mention that in fact the "full room rate"
(or rack rate) only applies at the busiest time of the year, and then only to people who
turn up at the door for a last-minute booking. Otherwise, no one pays it !
Of course it does happen that sometimes you may get a
special deal from an Internet booking site, better than you can get
anywhere else. Internet portals use "loss leaders" to attract customers
in the same way as supermarkets do; but the chances are that this will
not be the case.
Book
direct and cut out the middleman
Bying direct from the operator (ferry, hotel, etc) means cutting out
the middleman, and is often the best solution, in terms of price and reliability. In the list below, you
will find direct links to cross-Channel ferry and transport sites, and
to the sites of some of the main hotel chains in France. Click the
links, and you'll get taken directly to the operator's own website,
where you can check out their special offers and book directly, at their prices.
Book directly with the operators.... Ferry companies and
Channel tunnel service operators
Eurotunnel (Putting your car on the
train from Folkestone to Calais)
Eurostar
(Train service from London to Paris or Brussels)
The
most
convenient means of travelling by train from London to
Provincial France is to
take the Eurostar (click for prices) from
London, Ebbsfleet or Ashford to Lille, and connect at Lille
to a French
TGV. There are direct TGV connections from Lille to a large number of
French towns and cities, including Bordeaux, Rennes, Nantes, Dijon,
Besançon, Avignon, Aix en Provence, Marseilles,
Montpellier, Perpignan
or Nice. By changing at Lille, travellers do not need to change
stations and haul their luggage across Paris. At Lille Europe station,
Eurostar trains from London and Brussels use the same platforms as
French TGVs going all over France.
The Rail
Europe booking form on the left allows you to book your
European rail journey from London, Paris or other major European
locations. If the departure city or destination you are looking for
does not come up in the roll-down menus of the booking form, click on
the link below for further options and offers.
To
contact About France com, send an email to info
"at" about-france.com (Anti-spam
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