As stats tell us that more holiday bookings happen in January than in any other month, we arm you with everything you need to know before booking your next trip.

Cheapholidayexpert.com founder Chelsea Dickenson joins the team to discuss the best city breaks, staycations, and long-haul destinations to get you inspired.

Check out the destinations where your pound will stretch furthest in 2024 & our advice on where's hot in January?

*Please note this transcription was created using AI transcription software, and may not be a fully accurate representation of the conversation recorded during this episode.

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Unknown Speaker 0:21

Is anyone else dreaming of holidays and warmer climes? You wouldn't be alone. stats tell us that more holiday bookings actually happened in January than in any other month? Are you planning any holidays, Harry,

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I have nothing planned, I'm too disorganised. I'm going to let the cheap flight guards pick the destination and go whenever?

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Well, if you're thinking about where to book, your next holiday, this podcast is going to be really helpful. We're going to hear about the best short and long haul destinations, where your money will go first, and the tips and tricks to deploy to get the maximum value from your next break. We're joined today by the wonderful Lauren Bell from the Which? travel team. And we have a special guest joining us. It's Chelsea Dickenson, the founder of cheap holiday expert. And look, if you're not already following her, then you need to because I can't actually describe how insanely useful and brilliant her content is. It's so good to have you both on Hello. Hello. Thanks so much for having us. Hi. It's so nice to have you on. Now, Charles, you've been sort of here, there and everywhere recently traveling around Europe to find the best Christmas market. I

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mean, very, very important work stuff if you're asked me.

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So which one ended up taking the top spot, but it was really interesting, because

Speaker 3 1:33

actually it was down to my Instagram followers to vote which one I should go to. So had seven to choose between. But you know what came out top? Probably not surprising. Cologne, you know, the Germans, they do their Christmas market so well. But it was just they have so many different ones. And they really tick off that authentic Christmas feel. And the mulled wine three pound 86 same price as the bratwurst. And that's pretty good in my book.

Speaker 1 1:59

Well, it's good to know for next year. But Christmas is now firmly behind us. So let's turn to this year, where should we be traveling? I'd like to start with sort of short haul. So looking ahead to the February half term that sort of coming up next, there's going to be lots of people who want to take the kids away. Where would you recommend Chelsea? Do you want to start?

Speaker 3 2:20

I think especially with the cost of things that seems to be you know, still going up, unfortunately, especially in those peak family periods. It is all about thinking what is actually outside of the top 10 destinations that we are used to seeing. It feels like in the UK, we're all quite obsessed with Spain. If you really do want Spain, then I would say be sticking to you know the main land and actually getting a higher car, which is often super cheap. And heading up like an hour away, you know, up into the Andalusian hills. Absolutely gorgeous, and so much cheaper than heading out to the Canary Islands which you know, I do understand it because in February the weather is you know, it's really really good. But if you can sacrifice you know, a couple of degrees, your money is gonna go so much further by sticking to the mainland.

Speaker 1 3:07

I always find Grenada is a really underrated city. Yeah, somewhere I go quite a lot and then just no one ever seems to have gone to Granada and it's brilliant. But I don't think you can fly direct annoyingly you have to fly to Malaga.

Speaker 2 3:20

Never been I don't think I've ever been to mainland Spain. Yeah, I accidentally maybe I accidentally drove through it from Portugal once. Accidentally just click the corner of it. But Portugal I found is is really good for that kind of a lot of the similar kind of vibe of Spain. Really surprisingly cheap.

Unknown Speaker 3:39

Really cheap. Yeah.

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you got to go outside of the key kind of pilgrimage season where it's just nuns everywhere.

Unknown Speaker 4:26

Oh, in like peak. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 4:27

awful. Right off.

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Right in the February half term. I'm Catholic myself, so I should no holidays around that time. Lauren, what about you? Where would you suggest?

Speaker 4 4:39

So looking at the witch travel survey, the top two cities in Europe this year, we're Krakow, although that's actually not the first year that it's paired at the top. That's the fourth time in a row. And it was joint top with Valencia. They're very obviously very, very different. Krakow has got a lot going for it. It's also super cheap. Apparently it's 65 pounds on average per night stay in a three to four star hotel. Really? Yeah, across the year. So I guess that averages out in the letter, like visited months as well. But yeah, so super cheap blends is a bit more though over 100 quid a night. But you know, you can't go wrong there, you've got like the old meets new, you've got the futuristic science and arts area, you've got the cathedrals paella tap path. I mean, what more do you need? Really,

Speaker 1 5:27

I know, you've been putting together a list of the best European city destinations for which travel, what else made that list.

Speaker 4 5:34

Unknown Speaker 6:22

juicer rovers just looking.

Speaker 4 6:27

Yeah, it's complete, apparently with Spangler stage outfits in there. So it's worth a visit if you like ABA, but

Speaker 1 6:33

alone, right. So am I right in thinking then the top three were Krakoff Valencia and Stockholm? Yes,

Speaker 4 6:39

yes, they all scored above 90% in our survey, which means that people would recommend them or visit again. And what

Speaker 1 6:47

about closer to home? staycations. They had a real moment in the sun, didn't they sort of over the pandemic as we were coming out of that. And there is a moment in the sun, just thinking about our weather. And I think people are always quite shocked at actually how expensive staycations can be. So do we have any advice for how to save money on staycations? Lauren? Yeah,

Speaker 4 7:11

a few tips. Obviously, if you've got families, it's always going to be a little bit more expensive. Unfortunately, there's just there's not huge way around that. But we do have a few tips. So for instance, just remember that not all children in the UK are off at the same time. So half term holidays in particular, you might find that Welsh children or kids in Northern Ireland will still be studying. So if you're based in say, London, you might find a bargain. And for example, Pembrokeshire. And Scotland also has its main summer break much earlier than England. So this little hack we just found could save you hundreds of pounds. So that's one of our main ones, perhaps

Speaker 1 7:50

interesting what so you could maybe go sort of late August, early September, while the English kids are still off, but Scottish kids will have gone back

Speaker 2 7:58

and coming down the pike, Wales is going to have a five week summer holiday. So whilst kids will have more opportunities to get cheaper holidays, because they'll have longer half terms the rest of the year. And I will also put in a word for Pembrokeshire completely agree, also where I'm from, it is like, it's Cornwall, but better, Cornwall bit cheaper. And yeah, you will save a fortune by going there. It's amazing.

Speaker 3 8:24

And we are so lucky here in the UK, because you do not have to go far to find some absolute gorgeous coastline and countryside. And that's why I always say to people, if you're really struggling to find the right price for you in these popular spots, literally move 10 Miles move the map over where is slightly less nine that is close to somewhere great, you know, we are really lucky that we can explore in that way. And also you don't have to have a car. There's this amazing thing called the rangers and rovers Pass, which essentially is a bit like the UK is own version of Interrail that nobody seems to know about. And it works across loads. There's over 100 different versions of this. I did it in South Wales. So you know, I spent I think the past allows me to have four days of travel and an eight day period. You could only use off peak trains, but you can use rail cards on that too. So it's really good if you've got that family and friends rail card, and it was so lovely. I just hopped on and off trains explored the coastline. I just thought that was a fantastic way to get out and it'd be really good with the with the family as well.

Speaker 1 9:31

Now the great thing about short haul trips is that you don't necessarily need to fly as we've been saying. And you know, traveling by train obviously has a much lower carbon footprint than flying. But there are other benefits to traveling by train aren't there that go beyond the environment. I mean, Harry, I know you took a wonderful trip last spring can you tell us about

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it? Yeah, I am such a evangelist for train travel. I love it. It's it's obviously you're saving bit of money. Obviously it takes a little bit longer but the time time that you get on a train is genuine time or time spent in an airport is gone, it's wasted. You never get that back on a train, you can actually live your life watch a film, do some work if you want to if you're boring. So I we got a an Interrail pass, much like the Ranger and rover, but International, which we had, it was like a month one. Normally that will set you back 454 pounds, that we got it half price for their special anniversary thing. So my partner and I, we went to Istanbul and back in 20 days, which cover 12 different countries, maybe wouldn't recommend that kind of shorter period or rush really trying to get as much in as possible. But never feels like a rush because you're not waiting for an aeroplane, you can just hop on a train, you sit there, I don't think we ever went on a train that was as bad as a bad British train, no standing no kind of I'm not surprised. Even just the really old like Romanian trains, they felt like a luxurious kind of like steam train experience almost. You have the compartments and you have you know, someone coming round checking your tickets. And there's a real sense of like, it is an event rather than a chore. But you are going to save a fortune. If you can do it, combine it with sleeper trains, so you don't have to go and use hotels, you can also I think you really can have your downtime on a train when you're traveling in Europe. So I cannot recommend it highly enough. And one of the crazy things about it is it's actually cheaper sometimes to buy an Interrail pass that gives you the inbound and outbound tickets, then doing a return to say Manchester at any time. Return to Manchester can be like 300 pounds. You can buy one of these tickets with that you're allowed to journeys basically in the UK. So you can go to Manchester with your interrailing party. Yes. And you don't even need to go to Europe to us. It might be a little bit fraudulent your waste, to waste, but it is incredible. It can be a real saving that sums up the British trains I think yeah, to be honest,

it does. I really want to try this hangout. I've heard that it is one. Yeah, but apparently Interrail time is set to European time, which is one hour ahead. And therefore technically, you could get on one of the sleeper trains in Scotland the Caledonian because they depart at 11pm. But that's technically the next day in Europe. Yeah. So you could do a sleeper train all the way down to London, then get the Eurostar into Paris. And that would still effectively be your one day of travel in the UK. Now that is, that's just me hearing about it. I haven't tested it out to test this. But I think there could be a massive hack there. Anyone

who's listening has done that. Do let us know. Let me know. Lauren, are there any other tips for for booking cheap train or Eurostar tickets.

So Eurostar generally the tickets come out about 11 months in advance, and they are cheaper that early you book generally, as you creep towards the time you want to travel, you know, we're talking within three months with a travel day wouldn't go, they start going up sharply. So it's definitely worth looking out and booking early. If you can. I know it's not always possible. But yeah. And then another little tip that we found that you might not know, maybe you do, I didn't know it. So you can add a ticket on to any Eurostar ticket for 12 pounds, and you can travel to any station in Belgium. So it's quite a little bargain. little hack. If you want to go somewhere in Belgium. Brilliant

stuff. Well, don't go anywhere, as we've got juicy gossip about the UK is worst airport. And we're going long haul after this.

So Lauren, what is the worst airport in the UK? And how did you figure this out?

So Manchester is actually the worst according to our members. That's not my personal view. I have been once there and the queues were very bad, particularly terminal three, which came like right at the bottom of our survey, followed by Terminal One which came second bottom. Basically, to get to that answer back in the summer. We are 1000s of people who use various airport terminals in the UK. They use them in the last year and we asked them to rate them on everything from like how much seating there is to how long they had to queue at baggage or security. And the queues at terminal three must be absolutely abysmal as people gave it one or two stars out of a possible five for all of the queues at the airport. And that's from security to baggage drop everything but to find where it ranked overall. We just basically said Were you satisfied with your experience your visit to the airport and would you recommend it and it got 30% Customer score over Oh, not great. No. And

some people might say, Oh, well, you got to go to, you know, people just go to the nearest airport. Is that always worth doing? Just going to the nearest airport? You might as well?

Well, it kind of depends. Because obviously in London, you've got a lot of options with Manchester, actually. I mean, personally, I would travel 30 miles up the road to Liverpool, John Lennon airport that came top. Really? Yes. Wow. Okay, so yeah, doing so right. Well, people just gave it rave reviews. They said parking was hassle free. They said it was reasonably priced staff are friendly and helpful. And they whizzed through security and an average of 11 minutes. Don't think happens at Manchester too frequently.

And they are so close to each other. If you've got the choice, you might as well go with Liverpool. So

we're sorted for sure whole destinations I fail. But what about long haul? So Chelsea, where would you recommend this

year? Well,

I had to cancel this trip this year. And it's it's kind of in between that short and long haul, kind of timing, you know, you look around the seven hour mark, perhaps a bit longer if you're gonna change in Turkey. But I really want to go to as Becca, Stan, this year, I am obsessed with it. If you are like where please just give it a Google you will be smitten within seconds when you see the images, you know, speck iStan part of the Silk Road so much history culture, absolutely gorgeous. These like tiled turquoise buildings, it's stunning. I also think it's a really good time to go. Because it was having a bit of a moment pre pandemic, to the extent where even the tourism boards and the government were thinking about ways that they could potentially slow down the tourism because of the effect it was having on his incredibly old buildings. And I think perhaps what that did, that little pause has made them you know, think about how they do things, hopefully they've got better ways in place to protect that. But it hasn't, you know, it's kind of taking a bit of time to get back to that momentum that they had. So if you want to go I just think it's going to be a really popular place in the future. Because it's, you know, it's quite easy to get to it's not too expensive. But once you're there either. I think it's a really good time to go and really feel like you've discovered something and yeah, being somewhere where no one else has.

Yeah. Can you do the stands as a bit of a tourist? Or is it just such a wide area?

No, you can do it. What I would actually recommend is probably booking with a group trip if you wanted to do all of the stands just because there's so much to do. I'm

sorry, is the stands like a common terms? Yeah, okay, right.

As Becca sound is actually the most set up and ready for tourism, it's got a bullet train in between some of its key cities, you know, you can do a lot of different destinations in seven to 10 days. But if you wanted to go further afield and do more of them, I think it's one of those places, you need a bit of help.

I see any other recommendations for for long haul destinations this year,

I think flexibility is key, because we are seeing prices go up more for long haul. And so if you have a bit of time to play with and even where you're gonna go into play with, that's going to be so helpful. And you've got amazing people already, you know, finding these deals for you Jack's flight club, you know, has a small subscription, they do have a free option as well. But they ping into my inbox all the time. And I am blown away with the prices. I think like Seoul, Korea, the other day was in the four hundreds. And it's just been able to jump on to those when you see them, you do have to react quickly. So I think a big thing I would say is in 2024. If you want to go long haul but not spend a lot of money, you have to plan to be spontaneous.

I love that line plan to be spontaneous. That's something I struggle with. Actually, I was such a control freak. But I'm going to try. So you mentioned Jack's flight club. Lauren, have you got any other tips or websites to help you save money when you book?

I guess my tip really is booking sites. Sometimes you use them. You look at third party booking sites and find cheap flight prices. But they look like great headline prices. And sometimes they're not once you've added stuff on so if you're adding on the bag and the See, sometimes it goes up way above what it would cost you to go direct just because they're ramping up the prices of those extras. And some people might not know that because they don't make it obvious. You might pay you know double what you would on a on a Ryanair flight for a bag just by booking through a booking site. So just be wary of that.

Chelsea I know that you kind of advocate for actually choosing your hotel wisely because even if you save a bit on flights if you've got a really expensive hotel, or indeed the destination itself is really expensive. That's where you're going to rack up the money right? Yeah,

I talk about it as the triangle of cheap travel, which is make sure you check Number Three before actually booking your holiday, so cheap flights is just part of it. It's actually you know, your daily costs are part of it, and also your accommodation. It's so, so important. And if you are staying more than, you know, three nights, perhaps for Europe, you're probably going to be spending more in your accommodation anyway versus your flight. So you're better to save the money then. So just don't forget about the accommodation cost, don't book that flight, and then have a think about it, try and keep it all in mind. And another thing, cheap flight, perhaps I should change the top of that triangle to cheap transport or travel, because we often forget about car hire. And I think you know, many of us have been in that situation where you've booked everything, go to book the car home and go, Oh, no, I have made a grave error. It is more than the price of everything combined. Yeah. So just be checking absolutely everything before you hit book.

Chelsea, can I ask before we finish? What do you think is the most helpful, useful hack you've ever shared in terms of the response you've had from your social media followers?

The most helpful hack I've ever shared is absolutely asking for a free upgrade at your hotel. Because I've got a template on my website, which you know, just allows people to copy and paste I always tell them to tweak it. Make it you know, a little bit personalized. Why did you choose the hotel? Why are you excited to stay, and most importantly, putting no pressure on that person picking up the email saying, we're so excited, no matter what happens, we cannot wait to come. But if you happen to have the availability, we would love to be considered. So there's a very nice way of saying it. And once you send it off, you forget about it. Nobody owes you that grade. But I cannot tell you how many people it works for. But I get messages. I would say you know, maybe three or four times a week from people going oh my god, it worked. I am sat here in my suite with my champagne. Thank you so much. So yeah, if you're going somewhere, you know, and it's a treat, you know, let them know, it's a special occasion I say going on holiday is a special occasion. So why not get an upgrade for

brilliant. Well, thank you both so much for joining us today.

Thank you. Yeah.

Well, that was a fun way to start the new year starting as we mean to go on really, we're so excited to bring you more answers to all your consumer questions this year. Now, we'd love you to get involved. So can you send your suggestions for things we should cover? It can be anything from home renovations to wellness apps, anything you want answers on really, whatever it is, we promise you, we'll leave every episode feeling wiser about what you buy. We're on email at podcasts at which dot credit UK and our social handle is at which UK. And

this is your regular reminder to give us a rating and a review. Wherever you're listening. That would be amazing. Thank you very much. Doing that really helps us reach out to more people. And if you want to support the which cause we've got lots of different membership options at different price points. And obviously that gets you access to all of our locked up advice and test results.

Mm hmm. So Harry, what are we up to next time,

we are going to be chatting about health apps and lifting the lid on those smartwatches and fitness trackers that we all got for Christmas. Do they actually work?

Well, maybe it's not too late for me to make a health related New Year's resolution then. But if you want more great stuff to listen to before that comes out, check out the witch money pod for your personal finances. And we've got the best stories from which magazine narrated for you over on which shorts. Today's get answers was presented by me, Grace Forell, alongside Harry Kind produced and recorded by Rob Lilley Jones and edited by Eric Bria. And thanks again to our wonderful guests which traveled Lauren Bell and the brilliant Chelsea Dickenson aka she holiday expert. We'll see you next time. Bye bye