This is a great online travel agent, we have used this method of booking holidays for some time, and have never found it to be a problem, it is very easy and simple to use.
Firstly you have to decided where you would like to go, and when, after that it is all plain sailing, you just enter the details of the country you would like to visit, for example in our case Ibiza, then enter a resort in that area example Santa Eulialia (think that's how its spelt), then you have to choose ho many adults and how many children are going to be going on this holiday, example 2 adults and 1 child. Next is the choice of hotel, example Fiesta Hotel Don Carlos, and this only comes in a half board but with other resorts or other countries you get the choice of self catering, half board or full board. You then have a choice of flights that you could have either day flight, night flight or no preference, I find that if you put no preference you get all the flights listed.
Then you can choose to have free child places, if there any available in the hotel that you want to stay in, in the hotel that we stay in we got free child places until last year, but this year we got a discounted rate for the child price, so even though it wasn't free, you still save money.
After putting in all this information yourself you have already saved yourself the travel agents fee, that you get charged if you go to a travel agent on the high street. After a short pause you get the information that you wanted a full breakdown of all the information that you put in but complete with prices, and choice of flight times that are available on that day.
So after reading and confirming your desired holiday you have the choice to include insurance, meals on the plane and pre booked seats, which is great as you know that when you have finished going through all the information on screen you won't have anything to worry about.
Once your final decision has been made you can confirm your holiday, and depending on how far in advance you book it depends on how much deposit they require, and also you usually get around £50 -£80 off the price of your holiday just for booking it online. So again your saving money.
Once confirmed they ask you print out a copy of your information, which includes the information you filled in earlier, and also your payment details of the deposit that you have paid, and also your unique holiday reference number, so it is advisable to print this information and keep it in a safe place until your confirmation letter arrives.
That's it you have successfully booked and paid the deposit for your holiday.
We like using this company for booking our holidays, as they are very quick, very helpful if you have to telephone them about changes.
Also Portland holidays are a subsidiary of Thomson holidays, so you can always see how much you are saving by checking both sites for the same holiday, we did that his time and we found that by booking through Portland instead of Thomson we saved over £300, ok its not a lot of money, but its better off used as spending money.
Overall I would recommend this company to all others who want to save themselves £'s on holidays, ok I know you have to do the leg work yourself but in the end its you who benefit because of the initial saving on the coast of the holiday and the discount for booking online.
To recap, I would recommend to others, a great company, great holidays and great prices. What more could you ask for?
Also you can get Portland to send you a brochure and still book online or book by phoning the number in the brochure.
www.portlandholidays.co.uk Thanks for reading.
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a saving of £300 not at lot? you can buy 3 houses round our way for that, lol, thanks for the info, well written review, I will look into this site.
gemax2 17.01.2006 23:32
I booked my last holiday with them but i dont think you end up saving a great deal with them maybe i'm wrong but i tend to do everything myself usually i just got lazy about my last holiday because i just been so busy
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Advantages: Everything can be done on-line, Subsidiary company of Thomsons Disadvantages: None that I am aware of yet. but if you know of any let me know before I book
sue.51 09.06.2001 (29.05.2002)
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Review of Portland Direct
Jan 14th, 2006
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