No more holiday nightmares with Luxury for Less

I met my husband about 12 years ago when he was travelling/backpacking around Europe. It was his first night in Bucharest actually when I met him and as he was telling me about his stories I wished one day to travel as much as him. Little that we know that we will fall in love, get married and have kids one day and our plans will have to wait for when we are old.

I can’t say that we are not travelling though. We’ve been places together alone and with the kids since their blessed our life with their presence. When you travel you feel different, is like you can do anything because you are away and people tend to feel closer together though.

But holidays can be a nightmare too if any of you gets ill, the place you stay is not as the standard you thought it was when you book it or simply if the airline loses your luggage.

I remember coming home one Christmas (from London to Romania) with my husband when the airline misplaced our luggage. We waited about 3 days or so and as we arrived on the 24th of December the shops were closed too so we had to borrow clothes from my parents and we didn’t have any Christmas presents to give away either. In a way it was funny but can you imagine if that happened while going somewhere else?

Travelling with kids anywhere can turn from happy to hell in a split second. A tantrum, a kid falling off and hurting his knees(like my youngest especially) or an illness can turn your holiday from a happy adventure to a nightmare.

A couple of weeks ago I took the girls to the beach for a week and after only two days my eldest had a stomach bug. Can you imagine having to clean her vomit around the hotel room where you never have around what you have at home? It felt hard as I was by myself too with them…trips to the nearby pharmacy and spending extra money to cure her. At some point I actually wanted to leave the resort but my eldest bless her she refused. And thankfully she was feeling recovered after only 24 hours.

My youngest seems to get colds and sore throats every time we go away. Last year we spent the last days in UK running between hospitals and GP appointments. When we were coming back from Disneyland Paris two years ago she spiked fever in the airport and all my syrups were in the plane luggage and we are even luckier as our plane was delayed too,

Then, it was the time when we went for a holiday to Majorca. I was pregnant with my second then and Kara was about 3 and a half. We went for an all inclusive type of holiday as we thought that it will be the best for the situation. Online everything sounded perfect – small enough to be able to keep an eye on our daughter and 4 stars. However, when we got there all was a bit different. The room was not at all as we expected. We gave it 3* at most. The furniture was a bit wobbly and not very clean.The pool was actually tinier than we thought and a couple of days into our stay Kara got a urinary infection(from the water maybe)…but there was no pharmacy in the resort. I mean how is that even possible?I am sure other people needed it too! Husband had two walk a couple of kilometres outside the resort to find one.

But how can you ensure your holiday will not turn into a complete nightmare?

I guess you can never be entirely sure but I recently found out that Travelex has just launched Luxury for Less which wants to be the tool that will help you plan a luxurious holiday whilst keeping it on a budget.  It basically combines flights and hotels pricing  powered by l travel search engine Skyscanner. We always use Skyscanner to check for our flights especially so we are really keen to use this tool for our next holiday.

Like any company that have their customers in mind Travelex surveyed 1000 people in a bid to understand how they go about planning bog holidays and how exactly they want to get out of it.  In my opinion the result was quite unexpected. Apparently Brits define a luxury holiday as being switched off from internet and smartphone access(can’t imagine not checking my smartphone all the time). Also they look to spend about £2000 per person and staying in a 5 star accommodation at a beach resort such as The Maldives, The Seychelles, The Caribbean or Dubai.

Th above destinations are on my bucket list as well but as much as i love 5* hotels for such a pricing will have to budget quite a while in advance.

However, Travelex thought about everything it seems. As they are factoring in everyday holiday spending items such as wine, taxis and food, the travel inspiration search engine creates peace of mind by helping people to pre-plan their spending money requirements. Once holiday planners choose their dream holiday, they can then book their flights, hotel and get their spending money all through Luxury for Less.

Sounds good don’t you think? Now I need to sit down my husband in front of the computer and start planing! I think Dubai might be the place considering that my sister lives in Abu Dhabi at the moment!

However I just used the site and for our budget we couldn’t get there but all we need to do is to to choose any of the destinations below:

Are you planning going somewhere special soon? What are your holiday nightmare experiences?

Disclaimer: Article written in collaboration with Travelex