Cresta Holidays

...break trip last year with cresta holidays to go to dublin with a few friends.

The company itself is a tour operator who is part of the mytravel group(which i now believe is thomas cook as they have merged). The company itself is actually part of BCT travel which consists of Bridge, Cresta and Tradewinds. Bridge and cresta deal with shorthaul trips around europe and Tradewinds deal with the longhaul part with destinantions all over ...
...any problems in resort as cresta don't actually have reps in resort as they are not a charter company and instead have a 24hr helpline number to call. We didn't need toring whilst there so again i cannot comment on this part of the company but it seems a good idea in that it saves people having to visiting each hotel like they do abroad but at the same time if you haven't got easy access to ring or want to actually speak to somebody in person it's ... more

I booked a city break trip last year with cresta holidays to go to dublin with a few friends.

The company itself is a tour operator who is part of the mytravel group(which i now believe is thomas cook as they have merged). The company itself is actually part of BCT travel which consists of Bridge, Cresta and Tradewinds. Bridge and cresta deal with shorthaul trips around europe and Tradewinds deal with the longhaul part with destinantions all over the world.

When i booked i did it directly with them over the phone but, you can book them through any travel agent (however going places are part of the same company so if the agency is going to do any discount they'll be the ones who if anyone can do it for you - from experience though, they won´t always be able to discount anyway so that is why now i prefer to book directly with the operator if i can)

booking:
When i rung to make the booking i found it really easy to get through and was probably only waiting less than 2 minutes, inlcuding pressing the options for where i wanted in the world! Once i was connected to somebody, the girl on the phone was very helpful taking all my details and then searching everything for me - she advised me that it was available to book and told me the cost which, i was expecting the price to be around, and asked me if i wanted to book it straight away. (The package of 3 nights accomodation with flights and breakfast at the hotel was 153 each - it was roughly the same price in most agencies my friends had looked at but, out of choice of wanting to book directly with the operator this was one of the reasons i had chosen to book with them as it was me arranging the actually booking of the trip! The price above included a free night at the hotel so i was actually only paying the 2 night package price too) I had told her from the begining that i was looking to confirm a trip if it was all available and at a price i was expecting, so i was happy to book there and then.
The girl was very helpful and had a nice conversation with me regarding dublin whilst she was getting the holiday together for me and advised me on a couple of things to do - i told her i had been before which was why i knew exactly what i was looking for and once she knew that she then asked me how many times i'd been before and told me places she'd stayed too and recommended some hotels to maybe go to another time.

Once she had it all ready to book for me she asked to take my address first and confirmed it with me and a contact telephone number. She advised me that because my booking consisted of low cost flights(ryanair) the flight cost would have to be included in the deposit total as they were non refundable. She also advised me at this stage that if i paid with a credit card there would be a 2% charge - luckily for me i was paying by debit card anyway and she told me there would be no charge on this. That was ok by me so she took all the names from me and then once she had entered them in her system she aked me if it was ok if she read the names back phonetically to me? I told her that was ok to do as i do know the phonetic alphabet! (i imagine some people wouldn't and would assume they would still have to read all the names back to people booking though). After this was done she once more confirmed all the details of the holiday nad what was inlcuded before confirming the holiday.
Once she had confirmed it for me, she gave me a booking reference which was 8 digits long and advised me that the deposit had been taken. She also advised me that the remaing balance due would automatically go out from my account exactly 8 weeks prior to my departure date. I thought this was both good and bad! For me it was ok as the balance wasn't that high anyway but, i imagine if the holiday was quite a high cost and you'd forgotten it was coming out then it may cause a few problems!! However she did tell me that i could ring up to make payments when ever i wanted or send cheques with my booking reference on the back, to the address that would be on my invoice. She told me the invoice would normally get to my address given within 7-10 days (i actually recieved it in 5 days!). She aslo advised me before we ended the call that if i wanted to amend or cancel my booking beofre i travelled that i would need to speak to the 'pre travel' department who would be able to tell me any costs involved and do the amendments for me. i didn't need to ring them at all so i cannot say wether this department is as efficient as what the reservation part is! She told me also that once the booking was fully paid for, my travel documents would come to be normally 2 weeks prior to departing. the girl gave me her extension number before the call ended and told me to ask for her if i wanted to make any other reservations - i would have no problem doing this as the girl was friendly and seemed to know waht she was talking about so i would happily speak to her again!

my documents:
as the girl had mentioned they arived just in the two week mark before i travelled. i think it was something like 1 week and 5 days before we left that i got them! The documents were held in a slim booklet type thing which had my name on the top with the booking reference and inside were individual 'vouchers'. the vouchers were basically so we could hand them in at reception at the hotel and as we had booked the low cost flights, there were no flights tickets but instead a voucher with a flight booking reference on which we were to quote at check in to get our tickets. Most low cost airlines work like this so i was not expecting an actual ticket. I think some older customers might be atd confused by this though!

The trip:
we had as i said booked to go to dublin - we'd booked the hotel and flights with ryanair but no transfers as i had been before so knew i could get cheap return tickets for the shuttle bus directly outside arrivals. However, the flights we had booked were fine - no problems checking in at all and upon arrival at the hotel we were able to check in easily and without any problems. Ther were no problems throughout the trip at all however i did notice that at the back of the document booklet we had, it had an emergency number to ring if you had any problems in resort as cresta don't actually have reps in resort as they are not a charter company and instead have a 24hr helpline number to call. We didn't need toring whilst there so again i cannot comment on this part of the company but it seems a good idea in that it saves people having to visiting each hotel like they do abroad but at the same time if you haven't got easy access to ring or want to actually speak to somebody in person it's a little unideal. Again i can see some customers not liking this aspect.

website:
i had looked on the website but i always prefer to speak to people when actually booking a holiday as then i can give exact details of what i want. When i did browse on their site it seemed easy enough to navigate, however it didn't always find what i was looking for even though i knew it was possible! the website has links so you can choose to search for various things like accomodation only or hotel and flight or flight only etc and there were offers displayed on the front page along with a questions section but i didn't stay on it for very long so i can't say it's the worst site i have been on but i wouldn't know how good it is either!!

phone numbers:
when i rang through i rang the city breaks department it stilled asked me where i wanted to go and to select options for this but each brochure does have a different number on so nit sure if it would be the same if it was a different brochure you rang. These are the numbers i have from the briochures i do have!

cities - 0870 191 7810
disney - 0870 191 7812
ireland - 0870 191 7553

cresta overall i would recommend to anybody - i had no problems what so ever and the price of my trip was very reasonable for the standard of hotel we stayed in. They do a lot of different areas and specialise in different areas too as in the ireland brichure for example you can even do a holiday in a horse drawn caravan!!!!
i would book with them again and have looked at using tradewinds too for a long haul trip - if they are anything like cresta then i would be happy to book with them! 

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