I wanted to go on a cheap short city break over Xmas. After trawling through a lot of websites, I found this company which offers pretty cheap deals and was a lot easier to use than the others.
~ what they sell ~
Short Euorpean city breaks with Eurostar travel from London Waterloo or Ashford, Kent. Destinations include Paris, Brussels, Bruges, Lille, Ghent and a few others. They offer a range of hotel grades at each destination. Holiday prices are based on 2 people sharing for 2 nights but single supplement and extra night prices are also shown.
~ prices ~
Very good.
For £139 each we got 2 nights in a good 4* hotel (with breakfast) in Brussels and return Eurostar tickets. Definitely cheaper than booking yourself – Eurostar tickets alone were £109 each and the hotel rooms started at £70. I didn’t find a break any cheaper on any other sites.
The hotels offered weren’t out in the sticks and our hotel was of 4* quality when we got there. We had a choice of Eurostar departure times and they weren’t crack of dawn departures (we left Ashford at 9.30am on way out and Brussels at 4.55pm on way home).
Prices for Paris start at £99 for 2 nights including Eurostar travel but this varies according to the time of year, day of the week you travel and standard of hotel you choose.
~ hidden extras ~
None. No extra taxes or charges which was a nice change. We opted for their insurance at £10 each but didn’t have to. We paid £139 each for the break as it was shown on the website.
Easiest to use of all short break ones I tried. Choose a destination and it lists the hotels you can choose from. On the other sites when you chose a hotel you have to check it’s available by searching one date at a time. This is painful if you’re flexible on your dates and want to find the best deal.
This site displays a list of all available dates and prices for the hotel when you view it. This saved so much time!
~ ease of booking ~
You can send a booking request from the website but if you phone you can book straightway. The operator was nice and efficient. She explained our Eurostar tickets would read Waterloo even though we’d opted to join at Ashford so we’d know it wasn’t a mistake. The tickets and hotel voucher arrived within a week and included some tourist notes about Brussels aswell as a city map which was handy.
~ verdict ~
The short break was great. Because it was cheap I thought there was going to be something wrong but there wasn’t. There weren’t any hidden extras, we could travel on the trains we wanted to and it was very straightforward to book. When we got there our hotel had our reservation, knew we’d already paid and was very nice. We didn't get a room with a view but it was a bargain for what we’d paid.
Travelling on Eurostar was a nice surprise aswell, you don't check-in your luggage so there's no wait the other side and arriving at a train station in the city is much easier than an airport on the outskirts.
All in all a real result.
I’ve only used them once but I would definitely use them again.
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