Welcome to the
19th France For Families newsletter - a credit crunch special!
What better way to forget the depressing daily news of 2008 and to have
something to look forward to in 2009 than to book your annual family
holiday?! We understand that holidaymakers will need to be more
cautious with their budget this year, partly due to having smaller
budgets available for holidays and also because of the effect of the
exchange rate. But there’s never been a better time to holiday in
France and we provide a whole bundle of tips on saving money on your
holiday. Also we realise that many gite owners will be worried about
securing bookings for the 2009 season and so we also include some
special offers for you (see later).
But let’s start with our advice on
saving money as a holidaymaker. Actually, before we go any further…
you’re already close to the first good decision… a decision to holiday
in France, especially if you have a family! It’s so much more cost
effective to pack the family into the car and to pay for a single
channel crossing for the car + family than it would be to book flights
for everyone. It’s even better value now that petrol prices are coming
down to more reasonable levels.
Booking
your holiday accommodation
This is the place to start when
planning your holiday. Have a look on France For Families for
advice on which region to choose (we’ve just improved the holiday
regions page). You don’t necessarily have to drive to the south of
France for warm sunshine (although of course it helps if you can!).
Also you have a wide range of
accommodation choices available to suit all budgets, from camping to
luxury hotels. And if you choose our favourite holiday accommodation –
the gite – there is money to be saved by booking direct with the
owner and you will find hundreds of privately owned gites are now listed
on France For Families.
When choosing a gite, have a budget in mind before you start. You’ll find plenty of options available from luxury gites with private pools, through gites with shared pools (often a good idea if you can’t afford your own but have kids that love the water) through to gites without a pool. Even gites without pools don’t have to mean no swimming – you can find gites close to the sea, or even close to a river beach in the Dordogne or the South. If money is really tight then you could consider sharing a gite with friends or relatives (make sure you get on well!) – we usually find that the larger the property, the lower the effective price per person and, of course, the more people in the party the more easily you can keep the family entertained without going out to expensive attractions! Then you can consider ideas like cleaning the gite yourselves at the end of the holiday (you can save €50 to €100!). And if you’re really strapped for cash, you could always try a house swap. We’ve never done this so can’t recommend it, but we know of people who have done it successfully – see our website for advice.
The other key consideration is when to take your holiday. You’ll find that the last weeks of July and all of August are the most expensive. If you’ve got very young children then you should consider travelling at other times when you can get significant savings as gite owners are anxious to sell their off-peak weeks. For more information on French school holiday dates, check out our last newsletter.
Crossing
the channel
Having chosen your accommodation, the next
question is
how to get there. Of course you can
fly & hire a car but, as we mentioned earlier, the costs quickly add
up if you have a family in tow and there seems little point paying for a
family-sized hire car while your own car sits idle on the drive at
home! Budget choices for crossing the channel have sadly been reduced
considerably with the demise of Speed Ferries (a no frills operator on
the Dover to Boulogne route), however there are still ways to save
money. Firstly the choice of operator – whilst
Eurotunnel is a very convenient way to travel, it’s usually more
expensive than a
ferry.
Then time of travel is a big factor…if you’re able to travel very early or late then you can get big discounts. Similar savings can be made if you travel mid-week, although that’s often not convenient with accommodation.
We thought it would be interesting to try pricing different operators, so we made up a family of 2 adults and 3 children with a normal sized car, looking to travel out on the Dover to Calais route at 10AM on the 1st August, returning at 6PM on the 15th August. The results were quite surprising. In the following list we name the operator, the outward journey departure time, the return journey departure time and the price we were quoted:
Seafrance 9.30AM / 6.30PM £68.00
LD Lines 8AM / 4.45PM £96.75
P&O Ferries 10AM / 6.25PM £74.00
Eurotunnel 9.50AM / 6.20PM £177.00 (from Folkestone, not Calais)
Please note that these results were applicable at the specific time we made this search and there is no guarantee that the same prices will be available at another time. So they are a guide only. The simple conclusion we would draw is that it’s worth shopping around….as we expected, you pay for convenience with Eurotunnel…but we were really surprised that LD Lines were the most expensive of the traditional ferry operators. We expected their pricing would be lower as they mix freight traffic with holidaymakers’ vehicles.
Saving
money on travel in France
OK, you’ve made it across the channel.
You can still save an awful lot of money on your journey. In the past
we would recommend reaching France without too much fuel on board, but
given the collapse in the value of sterling it’s now far better to go
with a full tank (there are petrol stations in Dover if you’re
travelling by ferry, or in Ashford if you’re travelling by Eurotunnel)
and of course, return without too much in the tank! When you’re in
France, avoid filling up at service stations on the autoroutes…the
cheapest fuel is usually found at supermarkets (you’re likely to need
cash as we’ve found that often UK issued credit cards don’t work). If
you need a new road map of France, invest in a Michelin Touring Atlas as
the main map pages now show petrol stations located off the motorway, so
with a bit of planning you can hopefully save on your fill-ups.
When travelling in France, try reducing your speed a little bit….if you drive at around 110km/h you’d be surprised how much more economical your car will become. Try avoiding top boxes or roof racks if at all possible as they increase the drag on your vehicle, as do bike carriers (although if you’re planning on cycling a lot, then taking bikes will of course save money).
And finally, wherever possible, use N roads instead of autoroutes. You can save a considerable amount of Euros by avoiding the tolls on the autoroutes. Checking out one of the route planning websites before you travel will give you an indication of the autoroute charges for your journey so you can then plan any alternative route accordingly.
On the other hand, there are some corners that you may be tempted to cut which we would caution against. For example, travel insurance and vehicle recovery insurance. One of the France For Families’ team had to have an emergency appendix operation whilst on holiday in France…and yet another had to have their car repatriated to the UK following a catastrophic gearbox failure. Admittedly only two major problems in more than 25 years of holidaying in France….but those two times alone would justify the insurance we’ve paid out for the rest of the time! Savings can be made by putting the whole family on one travel insurance policy. If you will be taking more than one holiday this year buy a family multi-trip worldwide policy which will save money over purchasing one or more single trip policies. And check that your EHIC cards are up to date (see our last newsletter).
Should your trip warrant an overnight en-route stopover don’t forget that the best deals are at chain hotels that offer free beds for children in family rooms (usually children are classified as under 16years old). The Accor group for example has a range of hotels to suit all budgets.
When
you’ve arrived
If self-catering or camping, take small
amounts of essentials with you (washing machine tablets/dishwasher
tablets/tea bags/sugar) so you don’t have to buy more than you need. If
you have time before you leave make and freeze a meal for your first
night so you don’t have to worry about where or what to eat when you
reach your destination.
It’s amazing how much money can be spent entertaining yourselves once you actually arrive. To take a family of 4 into somewhere like Eurodisney costs well over a hundred pounds for one day, so if you’re going to do one of the theme parks, then make sure you arrive early and plan to leave late so that you get the best value for your money. But better would be to plan other entertainment (unless you’re lucky enough to be un-affected by the credit crunch…in which case you probably stopped reading long before now!).
There are obvious things you can do for free entertainment such as walking, or cycling if you’ve taken your own bikes. Have a look on France For Families’ regional pages for further ideas on both of these. Pack a picnic for your days out (and your journey to/from France) – service station sandwiches are very pricey and not always appreciated by the kids!
In all regions there are usually other entertainment options. For example, in Paris the museums are free on the first Sunday of each month. You’ll find that they will be exceedingly busy, but you can’t have everything! Also, consider a City Pass if you want to visit several museums or make good use of the cities transport system as they offer much better value for money. Marseille, Lille, Paris, Montpellier, Strasbourg and Le Mans are just a few of the cities that offer a City Pass. In addition, many of the historical monuments/museums are also free for children, often for those under 18 and others for the under 10’s. Check beforehand.
Money
Shop around for the best deal for
purchasing your Euros before travelling and at all costs avoid buying
them at either the ferry terminals/Eurotunnel where exchange rates are
at their peak.
Using a credit/debit card abroad can be expensive. Credit card interest rates are high and with most of the well-known credit card companies you will incur a 2.75% (on average) loading fee when using your card. These charges can all add up to a sizeable sum on your holiday spending. One account worth considering is a Nationwide Gold credit card which does not levy an overseas usage charge. Usually the exchange rate on credit card purchases abroad is better than that given on euros purchased in the UK. For withdrawing cash, a Nationwide debit card linked to their Flexaccount is the No 1 option as it does not charge for cash withdrawals abroad.
Skiing
tips
If you haven’t already booked
accommodation then have a look on France For Families for self catering
accommodation in the
Alps or
Pyrenees. If you can, avoid peak season around half term. Book
your skis ahead and consider a single resort ski pass unless you’re
really strong skiers.
Finally
for gite owners
We realise that the current economic
environment will be causing some uncertainty as holidaymakers are
reviewing their holiday budgets and the exchange rate means that
holidays in France aren’t as cheap as last year (although still very
good value for families as we mentioned earlier). Most important is to
make sure your property is well marketed and with
France For Families appearing high in search engine rankings there
can be few better places to advertise your property. Here are just a
few examples of keyword searches on
Google which return France For Families on the first page (often in
the first position) – “France family holiday”, “Best attractions in
France”, “Best gites in France”, “Brittany gites” and “Provence gites”.
And with more than three quarters of a million unique visits to the
France For Families’ website in 2008 you can be sure that advertising
will be good value for money.
For 2009 we are going to hold our featured advert prices un-changed at 2008 levels. This means that existing advertisers can renew at the same price as last year and new advertisers can publish an advert with us for just £25 per annum. Better still, if you have a property in the Cote d’Azur, Gascony or Nord Pas-de-Calais then until the end of March we will publish your advert completely free for 6 months with no strings attached. After 6 months we will invite you to continue advertising at our usual price levels but, if you decide not to, then that’s absolutely fine with us.
Don’t have a website of your own? Don’t worry – until the end of January we will publish a dedicated information page about your property and host it on France For Families absolutely free of charge. You can see an example here.
That’s about all the ideas we can come up with so far. If you have any suggestions to make we’d be delighted to hear from you so we can include them on the website, especially if you know of cost effective attractions which we can highlight in a future newsletter nearer the summer. In the meantime, have fun dreaming about the summer holiday!
With best wishes for a successful 2009 from everyone at France For Families!