... However, I came across a Hoseasons Country Cottages brochure at my parent’s house, and I was impressed by the lovely range of accommodation they had on offer, not to mention the attractive photos included.
Now Hoseasons weren’t a company I’d used before. Whenever, I’ve been looking for ... Read review
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Advantages: Superb range of accommodation for every budget. No hidden extras. Many allow pets. Disadvantages: I really cannot think of any.
...However, I came across a Hoseasons Country Cottages brochure at my parent’s house, and I was impressed by the lovely range of accommodation they had on offer, not to mention the attractive photos included.
Now Hoseasons weren’t a company I’d used before. Whenever, I’ve been looking for a holiday cottage in the past, I always seem to end up visiting various different websites, all with the same range of accommodation, which is ever ... ...therefore relieved to discover that Hoseasons Cottages are unique to Hoseasons and won’t keep coming up all over the net.
Hoseasons claim to be the UK’s leading self-catering specialist, but I have no idea if this is true or not. However, I do know that for UK holidays they don’t just offer Country Cottages, they also produce brochures on Lodges and Parks, City Breaks and Boating holidays too. Breaks can be booked for both long weekends ... more
For the last two years, we have enjoyed rather nice holidays in the UK. Having been huge fans of foreign holidays for the previous 18 or so years, this has proved a pleasant departure for us. There are no longer any airport delays, endless queues, cramped planes and indifferent staff on our agenda. There’s something rather relaxing about loading up the car with all sorts of bits and bobs you wouldn’t normally get away with in your 25kg maximum baggage allowance, and it’s so pleasant not to have to queue to check in, queue to board, queue to get off and then fight to reclaim your luggage. Granted the weather isn’t quite so good or guaranteed, but that’s good old Blighty for you. The best thing of all for us personally is that we get to take our dog too. Last year we took our retriever Bolly down to Cornwall for a week, and although she was very sick, she had an absolute ball, and has left us with some extremely fond and happy memories to take away the sting of her dying a few weeks later. This year, we decided to do the UK holiday thing again, and take our new retriever Tattie away with us (that said, we didn’t have much choice, as she is so naughty we couldn’t inflict her on anyone else….even a kennels…). We decided to stay a little closer to home this year as Tattie is none too keen on car travel. We settled on a 2½ hour car journey to Somerset.
Location decided upon, we needed to find somewhere nice to stay in Somerset, which would accept naughty puppies. In the past, we have used Cottages 4 U for holiday accommodation (we rented a couple of cottages in France through them), but I wasn’t really over-whelmed by the selection they had on offer in either Somerset or Devon. However, I came across a Hoseasons Country Cottages brochure at my parent’s house, and I was impressed by the lovely range of accommodation they had on offer, not to mention the attractive photos included.
Now Hoseasons weren’t a company I’d used before. Whenever, I’ve been looking for a holiday cottage in the past, I always seem to end up visiting various different websites, all with the same range of accommodation, which is ever so slightly frustrating. The mystery as to why the same cottages kept coming on different websites was eventually solved by discovering that a company called Holiday Cottages Group have brochures/websites under the banners of Welcome Cottages, Cottages Direct, Chez Nous, Country Cottages, Cottages 4 U, Easy Cottages and so on, and so on). I was therefore relieved to discover that Hoseasons Cottages are unique to Hoseasons and won’t keep coming up all over the net.
Hoseasons claim to be the UK’s leading self-catering specialist, but I have no idea if this is true or not. However, I do know that for UK holidays they don’t just offer Country Cottages, they also produce brochures on Lodges and Parks, City Breaks and Boating holidays too. Breaks can be booked for both long weekends and longer holidays. If you’re set on going abroad, they have brochures on Boating in Europe and Villas and Apartments (Cyprus, Turkey, France, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain are the countries they offer).
THE COUNTRY COTTAGES BROCHURE
The Country Cottages brochure is divided into 7 sections each covering a specific part of England, Scotland and Wales. We wanted to go to Somerset so we quickly turned to the pages on South West of England. Pages are colour coded, thus making it easier to find the area you want. As well as South West England, the brochure covers the South of England, Wales, the Heart of England (this includes the Peak District and the Cotswolds), the East of England, the North of England (the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales) and finally Scotland.
The brochure is very easy to read, with nice photos accompanying the text. Every property listed comes with a short description on location, the accommodation in detail and what’s included in the price (i.e. linen, towels, heating etc). The description will also include what appliances you get in the property i.e. dishwasher, washing machine, TV, DVD player, Freeview and so on. You’ll also be able to discover whether the property has a garden, patio or driveway.
Most importantly for us, the description of each property includes whether they allow pets or not. Hoseasons fall down a bit here, as it’s not instantly something you can spot. Brochures from Cottages 4 U et al, have a black dog symbol next to them if they allow pets, making it far easier to spot.
Each property has a price group code, and you need to turn to the rather complicated looking table at the back of the brochure, to work out exactly how much your chosen cottage is going to cost for the period you want. That’s the main reason why I prefer to browse for my holiday rental online, it works it all out for you! Added to which, you get more photos of the properties on the website, and it gives you the exact location on a map. There are maps in the paper brochure, but you need to turn to the back pages again, and work it out from the grid reference given by the property.
Having been impressed with more than a few of the nicer looking properties in their brochure, I decided to go online and get some further details on availability and price (as that table at the back of the brochure hurt my eyes!).
THE WEBSITE
I must say that the Hoseasons website is excellent. The home page gives you several very colourful options of where to head. Choices are narrowed down to Parks, Lodges, Cottages, Boats, City Breaks, Villas or Active Breaks.
Once you enter the Cottages option, there is a very handy drop down box on the left hand side of the page, which you can use to narrow down your search. You choose your country, region and then sub region. You enter how many people are in your party, and it’s worth noting at Hoseasons offer up to 20% discount for smaller parties of two. If you’re taking a pet, you then tick a box saying you’ll have a furry friend with you (otherwise you’ll end up being offered a range of properties that may not be dog friendly). Finally you have the option to put in some holiday dates, but this can be left blank if you’re not tied to specific times. Once you click Search you’ll get a list of available properties in the area you want. You can start to look through them individually, or you can narrow the selection down even further, by ticking on Feature Filters. This gives you further options on things like enclosed gardens, wheelchair access, non-smoking, detached properties only, swimming pool, four poster bed and many other “strings”.
When the filtered results come up, you can read more about the individual properties in detail - the list of accommodation, what’s included in the property and so on. Availability is given, as is the price for the period you want. You can view the property on a map, so you can ascertain where it is near. More importantly, viewing these properties online gives you the option to view shots of the interiors and exteriors. Brochure pictures are limited to one or two per cottage. Online, most properties have at least 3 or 4, and some cases 7 or 8. Similarly, some cottages offer virtual tours, although I must say I get very bored with these as they always move far too slowly for my liking..
Another handy feature of the Hoseasons website is that each property has a tab called In the Area, which is very useful indeed. It lists days out, local attractions in the area, history and heritage and all sorts of other handy facts and figures. It recommends local pubs and restaurants too - always handy if you’re on self-catering holiday.
After a while, all the different properties start to get a bit mixed up in your head if there are too many options / too much choice. Therefore, as you search, it’s a good idea to save your favourites and/or possibles to My Shortlist, so you don’t have to trawl through all the property descriptions again in order to find the house with the hot tub that you remember reading about half an hour or so ago.
BOOKING YOUR HOLIDAY
Once you’ve found your ideal holiday cottage, you can book it online, telephone Hoseasons direct or go via a travel agent.
However, do remember that if you do it online, then you are more likely to pick up a discount. As the date of our holiday approached, I noticed more and more cottages being discounted in an effort to fill them (sadly ours wasn’t discounted, and remained at the full price..). If you do book your cottage online do remember to go through your favourite cashback site, as there are discounts to be had. I went through Quidco and got what amounted to £25 cashback, which basically paid the fee for taking the dog with us :o) However, one thing to be aware of if you book online, is that they will automatically add holiday and cancellation insurance to the price, but it’s easy enough to take it off again if you don’t require it.
Like most holiday companies nowadays, Hoseasons will levy a charge if you pay for your holiday with a credit card, however Switch is free.
WHAT’S INCLUDED?
Please note that prices for all Hoseasons country cottages include bed linen and tea towels, so you don’t need to worry about carting your blankets with you (we had to take our duvet with us across the pond to France when we rented through Cottages 4 U). Some Hoseasons cottages include towels as well, but that will be detailed in your property description.
Happily for me, you don’t need to clean your Hoseasons cottage on departure, that’s down to the owner. They do request that you leave it tidy and neat, but that’s all. I was so relieved that we didn’t have to clean the place before we left; when we rented in France, we were required to clean the accommodation from top to bottom before departure. We were informed that if we didn’t clean the place adequately then we wouldn’t get our full deposit back. One of the French cottages we stayed in ended up cleaner when we checked out, than it had been when we checked in….and the owner was still very slow to give our deposit back. She also demanded some kind of local tourism tax that we’d never heard of. I was tempted to wrap the bucket full of cleaning utensils I’d carted over from home around her head…..
Another plus point for the Hoseasons Cottage we stayed in was that there was no deposit required when we moved in, and no inventory to go through. The holiday cottage in France made us pay a large deposit and we had to double-check the inventory (of cheap mismatched tatty crockery and cutlery) on both arrival and departure in order to get our money back.
As far as I can make out, there are no hidden extras if you book through Hoseasons. They’re fairly upfront about their charges. You pay extra if you take a pet (about £20.00), and they may require you to pay extra for a cot or high chair (depending on the property). Detail on heating supplied in the cottages is made very obvious in the property blurb both in the brochure and online. Some properties require you to put coins in a meter and others are free of charge. Some have wood burning stoves, and provide one basket of logs free, others make a charge for all logs.
OUR COTTAGE
Although this review is about Hoseasons in general, it wouldn't be complete without our holiday experience and what we thought of our accommodation when we got there.
We were more than pleasantly surprised by our cottage. It was actually better than we were expecting, and how often can you say that about something you’ve booked on the basis of a few photos? More often than not, the photos have been taken at a very crafty angle, making a living room or bedroom look more spacious than it actually is. Or they’ve dressed the room so it looks totally perfect, and the reality is anything but. Similarly, what you think is an isolated cottage in the middle of a country lane turns out to be surrounded by dominating neighbourhood properties or next to a busy road. Though to be fair, once we’d narrowed our final choices down to a shortlist, we looked at them on Google Earth just to see where they actually were. One of our final choices turned out to be just a stone’s throw from a motorway (not mentioned in the brochure or website!), so that was discounted immediately. There’s no way we wanted all that noise, not to mention the fear that the Tattie Monster might decide to run away and into the traffic….
In the end we settled on a three bedroom detached cottage on the edge of the Somerset / Devon border for one week. Little Royston (the name of the cottage) was situated in a quiet country lane, and was very peaceful and quiet, if somewhat isolated (the nearest shop was at least two miles away, so you definitely needed a car to make the most of your holiday). The nearest village was Churchingford in Somerset, which is more or less slap bang between the towns of Taunton in Somerset and Honiton in Devon. It was an ideal base for visiting attractions in both Devon and Somerset, and we managed to visit Glastonbury, Honiton, Taunton, Chard, Wells, Sidmouth, Beer and Seaton, as well the Donkey Sanctuary at Sidmouth and Escot Park in Ottery St Mary.
The accommodation at Little Royston was spacious and clean. I’ve hired holiday cottages before and been disgusted at the state they have been left in (the French holiday cottage with black pubic hairs all over the floor springs to mind…), but no complaints here. The property consisted of three good sized double bedrooms, two reception rooms (dining and living rooms), utility room, bathroom and a large fully fitted kitchen with Rayburn cooker. Although a period property, it had been sympathetically updated, and the furnishings were modern, light and bright. For example, the living room had a selection of deep, chocolate brown leather sofas and chairs. The bedrooms were all kitted out with comfortable and spacious beds and had plenty of wardrobe space, which was another bonus. I hate holiday accommodation which gives you hanging space for about two items. Fixtures and fittings were well thought out, we wanted for nothing. Crockery and cutlery was all first class and much better quality than we use to at home!
The highlight of the accommodation was the delightful garden. From the website, it was unclear just how huge the garden was, we were expecting a small square of lawn and a patio area to the rear of the cottage. What we ended up with was a huge off-road graveled parking area, and a set of steps leading off the patio area to a huge garden. ASBO dog truly loved the garden, as there was so much to explore (and sniff!), and as we were blessed with good weather during the week we were there, we made the most of it too. The cottage came with a range of garden tables and chairs, so we put them to good use.
All in all, our accommodation was superb, and the website photos (although plentiful) really didn’t do the place justice - especially with regard to the garden. If we had any criticisms of the place at all it would be that the kitchen was a little “close” in temperature. The Rayburn would certainly supply a lot of warmth to the place in the autumn and winter, but it was just too much in the summer. There was no option to turn if off at the owners had left written instructions not to tamper with it, as it takes 24 hours to come back up to temperature. Added to which, we needed something to cook on anyway! Luckily, there were a nice set of double doors leading to the patio and garden in the kitchen, so we just opened them up to let some cooler air into the kitchen.
Hoseasons supply the contact details of the property owners in your booking confirmation papers. The receipt will give you access arrangements i.e. where you’ll find the key or who you have to meet at the property. We were planning on telephoning the owners of Little Royston on the day before our holiday began, just to let them know what time we expected to arrive in Somerset. In the event, the owner rang us before we got around to it, and told us where we would find the key. He also advised us on a couple of issues with the property, which was most helpful. Whilst we were staying there, he popped by to make sure everything was to our satisfaction, which was a nice touch. We were slightly concerned about the mess the Tattie Monster was making (muddy paw prints, bits of twig and general clumps of dog hair), and asked him about a vacuum cleaner (one of the few things missing from the cottage). He replied it wasn’t something we needed to worry about (but he was planning on supplying a hoover for the property at some stage).
All in all, a very impressive cottage and a well enjoyed break.
RECOMMENDATION?
Yes indeed, I thoroughly recommend booking a holiday cottage via Hoseasons. Hoseasons have a superb selection of holiday cottages, lodges, boats and apartments to rent in their brochures / online, and I found the prices to be really very reasonable as well. We paid just over £500 for a three bedroom detached cottage with large garden for a week’s rental in early July. Last year, we paid over £700 for a smaller end of terrace cottage with shared garden in Cornwall (rented privately) at the same time of the year. Now I know that Cornwall is a more popular holiday spot than Somerset, so they can probably justify charging extra, but I’m not so sure if was worth an extra £200. Similarly, when we rented in Brittany through Cottages 4 U we paid around £500 for a week at a small two bedroom cottage, with some rather dodgy fixtures and a complete lack of any quality fittings.
The whole process with Hoseasons from start to finish was stress and hassle free. Our holiday accommodation was second to none, and much better than it looked online (it wasn’t featured in the brochure, as it was a new addition to the Hoseasons portfolio). If you’re thinking of going the self-catering route either at home or abroad, then I thoroughly recommend that you give Hoseasons a look. They offer a very nice selection of properties with a something to suit all budgets and tastes.
I’ll definitely be using them again next time. Recommended.
FURTHER DETAILS
Hoseasons Holidays Ltd Lowestoft Suffolk NR 32 2LW
Advantages: Private hottub, views, location, local attractions!!! Disadvantages: Absolutely nothing
...companies I stumbled across the Hoseasons website and started looking at what they had to offer.
I have never really been a fan of your typical British caravan type holidays as I like to relax when I'm on holiday and caravans have never really been my idea of fun and this is what I thought hoseasons sold but after alot of searching and investigation I found that in addition to basic caravan holidays hoseasons also offered luxury log cabin breaks ... ...well and showcases everything that hoseasons have to offer excellently. There are several different ways in which you can use the site to find exactly what you are looking for. They have a really helpful system which means that you can narrow down what you are looking for to a specific part of the UK if it is a particular part of the country you are interested in visiting, alternatively you can search for lodges based on specific features which you ...
vonney1967 12.09.2007 (08.12.2007)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Hoseasons Holidays
Like most holiday companies Hoseasons bring out a brochure around October/November time. But unlike other companies this is the only one that will come out all year. So the prices will always remain the same, whether you book the week after the brochure comes out or the month before you go on holiday.
There are a couple of exceptions, sometimes if you book early enough either just as or before the brochure comes out, but more about that in a moment.
... ...place has to offer as Hoseasons like to show you as much as they can. A variety of accomodation is often shown, both in and out. The pools, clubs and bars plus any places of interest locally. A small box on most pages also gives details of what is in the area thsat you may be intersted in visiting.
Each accomodation is listed, giving details of bedrooms, sleeping arrangements and bathrooms. Whether pets are allowed. Extra information is listed as ...
LUNAH_C 09.06.2004 (17.05.2005)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Hoseasons Holidays
Advantages: Well we now have a story to dine on!! Disadvantages: Too many to count
12.08.2006 -19.8.2006 A memorable holiday for all the wrong reasons, resulting from booking a self-catering holiday for 8 people plus dog with Hoseseasons, costing a little under £1,000
The main problem with it is was the lack of space, comfort and customer service.
Coming from a larger family (numerically) we are aware of how much space 8 people require. It's obvious this knowledge hasn't seeped into the consciousness of the Hoseseasons management. ... ...in the living room our cottage provided 5. As space was at so much of a premium we couldn't even bring the dinning chairs through as there wasn't enough floor space. Last time we checked a self catering cottage would have enough storage space for at least a couple of days of food. Our family would rather cook than eat out, its our thing. The kitchenette was unable to store half of the food we brought and that was after to took all the crockery out ...
Countrygirl71 17.12.2007 (16.12.2007)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Hoseasons Holidays
Advantages: Always excellent and good value Disadvantages: none
Hoseasons is my number one choice when booking holidays in the UK. Ive been booking holidays with them for over 18 years now and have never had any problems or cause for complaint. Customer service is always excellent. All the holiday parks I have stayed in have been excellent with first class accomodation, where attention has been paid to detail and in clean and comfortable surroundings. I have twice been tempted away by cheap offers - once at Pontins ... ...I book my holidays with Hoseasons online directly on their website, but I do use Topcashback and access the site via them as they offer cashback on all holidays booked. We prefer to stay in lodges with hot tubs these days, but have also enjoyed family holiday parks. Some of the sites I have stayed at and would recommend are :- Welcome Family Holiday Park, Dawlish Warren, Devon - this is a great holiday park right beside the beautiful beach at Dawlish ...
JEFFJEN 03.03.2009 (05.03.2009)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Hoseasons Holidays
Advantages: Excellent accomodation at reasonable prices Disadvantages: None that i know of
Hoseasons are a holiday company which mainly deal in holidays within the UK, the also do some in europe but i can only comment on the UK holidays.
Me and my husband (then boyfriend) started using Hoseasons around 10 years ago when we wanted a weekend break. They deal in UK breaks in log cabins, cottages and caravans and the prices are really good. For the first couple of years we used them, we used to just go away for a long weekend about 3 times ... ...You can either book with Hoseasons through a travel agent, online or over the phone. Their website is well laid out and very easy to use and understand. If you book through the website, you have to take their cancellation insurance, it doesn't give you the option to take it off. So what i normally do is go online, have a look and see what's available and then call them and book over the phone. Everyone i've spoken to are really helpfull, never had ...
Nicola_G 18.10.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Hoseasons Holidays
Value for Money
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