The Process of Developing our Florida Holiday

[ncmurray]

What an excellent idea to have started this thread!

Mostly owners and guests don't get to know why some decisions are made. Hopefully this thread will be insightful to us all!

Nuala

[DaveL]

Personally I think the villa or flights first question is more dependent on how far ahead you are booking and the type of holiday you are going on.

You are only going to be on the flights for a total of 18 hours but you will be in the villa for 14 days. So as long as you can get there then my priority would be where I was going to stay for the 14 days.

However if you are booking late or for a time when flights might sell out earlier than normal ( Easter and Christmas ) then booking the flights or at least getting them held on an option may be better.

Many people think that chilling out in the villa and by the pool is as important as the visits to the parks. If this is the case then getting a short list of available homes first can be a good move.

One important thing, depending on your point of view, is that there are not '20 Villas' there is only one. Every home on here is different, they have many of the same features but they are not the same. So if you have decided on something that you want speak to the owner.

Dave

[steph_goodrum]

Albert
I'd say get youur fligths first with 17 of you (have you rung Virgins group booking dept you may be able to get a special deal?

Beejay
Great idea and funnily enough echos something I was prompted to ask the other week of guests, but hadnt got round to.

I was wondering, we all know everybody has a budget, but particularly with such a wide variety of villas and facilities how do people decide where the constraints should be.
For example, if you have decided you are going to fly with Virgin, then no matter what agent , whether you book direct etc. you will get the same seat on the same plane and arrive at the same time etc. so the only 2 variables are price and service of provider. We have in the past paid slightly more to book through an agent we trust than book with say Expedia, because we know their service is good, any problems they are onto it straight away etc. so we want to keep them in business and contiue to receive that service level.

With so many variables with the villas, I thought it woudld be interesting to try and get an idea of where people are flexible.
For example, you've drawn up a short list of villas with criteria that you have decided are important to you, as it should be.
Do you set a maximum budget and then those that are over get excluded? If none are available at the price you have set do you
a) adjust the budget to reflect that to get all the things you wanted then the pricing you set may have been unrealistic.
b) adjust the wish list to what is within budget.


If economies have to be made do you sacrifice the more luxurious accommodation so that you can still do everything whilst there or do you still maintain the same standard accommodation and perhaps have a few less days in the parks and few more days at home to make the budget go further? Are there any aspects on the villa that will not be compromised regardless of cost?

I thought it would be interesting as again it helps both sides to set their priorities, eg. as owners it may be that the facilities being provided (internet, games stations etc) which all have to be paid for and reflected in the price charged to the Guest and push the base price up may not be important to as many people as we assume and they would rather have a lower base price , and do as the hotels do and pay for them if they use them.

It will certainly be interesting to read how you arrive at the decisions as you go along. I have been told by an agent that there are something like 40% fewer flights planned for next year so I would suggest it is worth checking your dates for availability as well.

[gpullan]

For us, the flights are the single most important thing to get confirmed. This is for a number of reasons:

*We have to take our children out of school for the holidays and need to get approval for that from the 3 schools.
*We fly from Manchester so only 2 direct flights per day (direct is a must for us with children aged 8, 6, 1 and 10 weeks)
*Skycot onboard as the adult to children ratio is not great (3 adults, 5 children) so we get a Skycot for the baby.

All the above makes booking the flights the most important part of the planning for us.

Time of year is important as we can only go in either October half term or February half term. (Summer months too hot with babies, Easter school holidays in different weeks)

Next is the villa. Price hasn't been the deciding factor for us. I'm not saying that i have an endless pot of money and budget, far from it but when 8 people are only paying around £150 each for accommodation for 2 weeks then in my opinion it is already great value so the villas themselves are the deciding factor not the price.

We generate our shortlist on the following:

*Facilities (south facing pool, Jacuzzi, 2 master bedrooms, obviously enough bedrooms, community) That's pretty much enough to get it onto the shortlist.
*We then narrow it down by how it looks inside (fixtures and fittings, furniture, layout).(Single storey for us this time with a toddler!)
*The last thing for us is the bonus items (Games room, Playstation, DVD, tv in each room, wi-fi).
By the time we have filtered the above we usually still have quite a few to choose from.
We then look at each location and what is around it, how far to restaurants etc. We don't mind how far to the parks as you go there for full days so it kinda doesn't really matter if it's 20 minutes or 40 minutes to the parks.
We are then down to a few and we connect the laptop the the big tv on the wall at home and get all the kids to essentially choose the villa with guidance from us adults. This time it is Belfry Drive, Highlands Reserve. Last time it was Windsor Palms.

Easiest part next, car hire. Log onto uscarhire, choose size of car (8 seater minivan), choose gold, choose supplier, pay the £25 deposit. done in 10 minutes!!!

A tricky part is the park tickets. This needs some thought and an itinerary producing so i know what we will be doing on each particular day. This takes time but basically once it's been juggled, researched and juggled again, i buy the tickets. This time it's 6 day Disney (no hopping) 7 day Universal 3 park and 14 day unlimited SeaWorld, Busch Gardens and Aquatica.

Insurance is easy, annual policy for 8 people with insureandgo.

Hotel at Manchester airport was also easy. We are travelling with 2 very small children so this time we are staying inside Manchester airport at the Radisson. We can get up at 5am, walk to check-in in our scruffs. Check in and get rid of the bags then walk back to the hotel to shower, change, chill, have free breakfast until about 1 hour before the flight then leisurely walk to the plane. A brilliant idea if i may say so!!!!!

That's basically my planning for florida. Everyone's i'm sure will differ, that's the beauty of this forum.

Hope some / all of the info above helps some first timers and also villa owners. Roll on February!

[Katys Grandad]

Just a thought and slightly OT but:

I've been visiting Florida in May for more years that I care to remember. What I've seen consistently is that airlines put up their fares on 1 May every year. If you can travel right at the end of April then you'll save quite a lot of money and, if you can make that departure date midweek, even more.

I just looked at Virgin's website and the fares LGW-MCO for a 4 week return are:

Thursday 29 April 2010 - £438
Friday 30 April - £453
Saturday 1 May - £483

For party of 4 you can save the equivalent of more than a week's car rental by going a couple of days before 1 May.

[steph_goodrum]

Part of that is the weekend supplement which is around £15 per person (if not more now) on Fri, Sat and Sun. Which works out to £120 saving by travelling on another day.

[Katys Grandad]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by steph_goodrum
Part of that is the weekend supplement which is around £15 per person (if not more now) on Fri, Sat and Sun. Which works out to £120 saving by travelling on another day.[/quote]Which is why I said you'll save more money if you can go midweek.[msnwink]

It looks like the £15 difference between the Thursday and Friday is the weekend supplement and that between 30 April & 1 May is the seasonal fare rise.

[atush]

I think you can shop for villas around the time you are looking to buy your flights. I have even asked an owner to hold a reservation for me for two days while I sort out the flights. then I go back and pay the deposit. Then you have tons of time to sort out car hire, tickets etc.

But I do agree that flights are the most important in a market that has so many options like Orlando. I have lost a few first pick villas in the caribbean while i sorted out flights though.