Keep the costs down

Hello – how are you? This is a happy week for me as my daughter is in town. She lives in Dubai and is here to complete a course module for her studies. She arrived in London hoping to escape the heat in Dubai, only to be met with uncharacteristically hot weather here! I did warn her in advance – but do kids ever listen to their mothers? Thank heavens it’s cooling down a little now, for both our sakes!

Are you going abroad this summer, either on holiday to ‘recce’ out your new projected homeland, or indeed to actually relocate? For those sun worshippers amongst us, it may interest you to know that the number of tourists worldwide have dropped, mainly of course due to the almost universal slump in the economy.

So…what to do about this?

If you Google holiday deals, you will find that many holiday companies are offering cheaper deals that ever - a sign of the times. But, if like me, you like to travel independently, you may find that planning a trip yourself can work out very economically. I have often renegotiated accommodation prices and today, with tourism in the doldrums, I would certainly try this. In Greece for instance, admittedly out of season, I have seen from the prices on the back of the door that I paid only a third of the room price! There are low cost airline flights plus a growing choice of self-catering options, as well as keenly priced hotels. You may find B & Bs an even better option that the bigger hotels as they can be more flexible price-wise.

Sometimes too it pays to go just a short distance from the most popular areas – the price can drop dramatically. Most visitors to the Algarve for instance go west from Faro airport to the busy coastal resorts of Albufeira, Portimão and Lagos. These are the most popular destinations, and therefore the most pricey. If you go east to the nearby pretty riverside town of Tavira for instance your holiday can cost half as much! Food is much more affordable and so is the accommodation.

Try and go where the locals go rather than where the tourists congregate – they know a whole lot more than we do about their own country!

And if your trip is part of a property viewing trip, this could be a very good time. Prices have dropped virtually worldwide and some are not expecting the market situation to improve before the second half of 2012. You do however really need to focus on accessibility – always important but never more so than now. You don’t want to have to spend hours – or hard earned cash – getting to your property.

I write a monthly Emigration newsletter and I am dedicating my end July/ early August one to transport – you may like to look at it. Just go to: http://www.emigrationguide.com/newsarchive.htm around about 29th July.

Enjoy summer and keep smiling!

Carol.