There are two buzz words in the travel industry right now, and they’re not
“bon voyage” – they’re “credit crunch”.
Yep, times are tough, but that doesn’t mean your holiday has to suffer.
Botswana’s Okavango Delta too pricey for you this year? Head to the Caprivi
Strip in Namibia instead: same game, same boat trips, yours for less than
half the cash.
Val d’Isère out of the question? Head down the valley to Ste Foy: tiny resort,
tiny prices, big reputation among local ski guides and powder hounds, who go
there on their days off.
So, look beyond the obvious and shop outside the box – or let us do it for
you. From sailing to skiing, from Croatia to the Canaries, we give you the
smart way to the best holidays.
— Prices at the start of each section are per person, per day, and include
flights, transfers and car hire
ITALIAN VILLA
DON’T go to Tuscany – £121
DO go to Umbria – £71
Imagine Siena without the crowds, Chianti without the Brits, Pisa without the
street vendors trying to flog you belts and watches. Actually, don’t imagine
it – visit it. It’s called Umbria, it borders southeast Tuscany and, if it
doesn’t have the spires of San Gimignano or the cypress-lined avenues of
Chianti, it does have a string of ludicrously lovely medieval hill towns,
among them Assisi, Spello and Bevagna. It’s Italy – it’s contractually
obliged to be gorgeous. It’s just not called Tuscany, so they’re not allowed
to rip you off and herd you about like sheep.
How to do it: Invitation to Tuscany (020 8742 8552, www.invitationtotuscany.com)
has Castelonchio, the three-bedroom wing of an old stone farmhouse with a
pool, overlooking Lake Trasimeno in Umbria, for £1,471 a week in high
season; the comparable Il Mulinaccio in the heart of Chianti costs £2,318. A
week’s hire of a seven-seat car starts at £435. Flights on Ryanair to Forli
(currently about £180 in July; www.ryanair.com)
are often cheaper than those to Tuscany’s gateway, Pisa (£390).
CLASSY SAFARI
DON’T go to Botswana – £464
DO go to Namibia – £182
We love the Okavango Delta – a picture-perfect patchwork of islands with vast
herds of game and more than 400 species of bird – but the Botswanans don’t
half make you pay for the privilege. It’s simple economics: the government
restricts the number of guests the camps can take, so top-dollar luxury is
the norm. Throw in the fact that you have to fly in, and what you get is a
cocktail of silly-money prices and elitist exclusivity that acts like catnip
on the super-rich. Prices have quadrupled in the past five years – £600 per
person per night is not unheard of.
You don’t have to be super-rich, though. Stay north of the border, in Namibia,
at the top of the delta “panhandle”, the Caprivi Strip: same game, same
delta, same boat trips to see elephants and buffalo, all for far less cash.
While the super-rich might balk at the two-or three-day drive from Windhoek,
stopping off in Okonjima and Etosha breaks up the journey – and makes it a
proper safari.
How to do it: Audley Travel (01993 838500, www.audleytravel.com)
has 13 nights, self-drive, to the Caprivi Strip, via Etosha, from £2,550,
including all meals and game drives in the Caprivi, car hire and flights
with Air Namibia to Windhoek. A comparable package in Botswana starts at
£6,500.
EURO SUN
DON’T go to mainland Spain – £61
DO go to the Canary Islands – £49 (with savings of at least 10% on food, drink
and fuel once you’re there)
Travel inside the eurozone this summer and you might have to remortgage the
house, but if you head to Spain – the cheapest eurozone country, according
to a recent report – you might just manage a pud with your paella.
Better still, head to the Canary Islands. Whereas food, booze and fuel is
taxed at 16.5% on the mainland, on the Canaries it’s just 4.5% – and
government import subsidies lower prices even further. Mahou beer costs
£1.20 in Madrid, where they actually brew and bottle the stuff; in
Lanzarote, it’s 95p. It’s madness, a self-caterer’s promised land – don’t
try to understand it, just order that second rioja and enjoy.
How to do it: flights are much of a muchness, despite the disparity in
distance, with fares on Monarch Airlines (www.monarch.co.uk)
to both Lanzarote and Alicante ranging from £130 in mid-July to £223 in
mid-August. Premier Holidays (0800 047 0400, www.premier-holidays.co.uk)
has Villa Rosato, a three-bedroom villa with a huge garden, just five
minutes’ walk from Puerto Calero marina on Lanzarote, from £996 per week per
villa. The comparable Villa Estrella on the Costa Blanca starts at £1,488.
OPERA SHORT BREAK
DON’T go to Verona – £318
DO go to Bregenz – £228
It is hard to argue with Verona’s opera festival: its arena, a slightly
scaled-down version of the Colosseum, is magical. It’s unmiked (the
acoustics are fine, if a little patchy), and the passionate audience is as
engrossing as the performers. Traditionally, everyone lights a candle as the
opera begins – you don’t need to know your Tosca from your Traviata to feel
your spine tingle when that happens.
Spine-tingling comes a lot cheaper, however, over the Alps in the Austrian
town of Bregenz, where a floating, 7,000-seat open-air stage – the Seebühne
(lake stage) – on the shores of Lake Constance provides one of the most
dramatic settings in the opera world. Nothing matches the heart-stopping
moment when Tosca’s lover, Cavaradossi, is shot – and plops into the lake.
How to do it: JMB Travel (01452 715370, www.jmb-travel.co.uk)
has two nights in a four-star hotel in Bregenz for £414, B&B,
including flights with British Airways to Zurich and tickets for a
performance of Tosca at the Seebühne; airport transfers are £43pp. A
comparable package in Verona is £636, including transfers.
SWANKY SKIING
DON’T go to Val d’Isère – £422
DO go to Ste Foy – £162
Val d’Isère has some of the best chalets in Europe, with access to 186 miles
of piste, 154 runs, 89 lifts, two snowparks and nearly 25,000 acres of
off-piste. Great... but who could possibly need all that? Too bad. You pay
for it, anyway, with lift passes (£175) and ski hire (£180) among the
dearest on the skiing planet. Not that it puts anyone off. There are 27,000
guest beds in Val d’Isère – stand in line for the Grande Motte funiculaire
of a Sunday and you’ll swear most of those guests are ahead of you in the
queue.
Which is why you should go 25 minutes down the valley to Ste Foy. It’s tiny –
just four lifts, 20-odd miles of pistes, a handful of cafes – and the best
skiing holiday I’ve had in 30 years. Cut-price (lifts £136, ski hire £80)
and crowdless (just 3,500 guest beds), it has north-facing slopes that hold
snow even in fallow years and is a favourite with French families and local
instructors, who come from nearby Les Arcs, Tignes and Val d’Isère itself
for the empty off-piste.
How to do it: Venture Ski (0870 242 4881, www.venture-ski.com)
has seven nights, half-board, at Chalet Les Ormes (sleeps eight) for £6,776
in March; the same week in Chalet Valpierre (sleeps eight) in Val d’Isère
costs £18,720 with Descent International (020 7384 3854, www.descent.co.uk).
Airlines flying to Geneva include EasyJet (www.easyjet.com)
and Swiss (www.swiss.com). Airport
transfers cost £75pp for Ste Foy and £220 for Val d’Isère.
EXTREME SPORTS
DON’T go to New Zealand – £1,185, including “awesome foursome” (£195) and
flights (£990 with Air New Zealand)
DO go to Scotland – £135, including multi-activity day and train fare
Queenstown in New Zealand is home to the “awesome foursome” – that’s
bungee-jumping, whitewater rafting, a helicopter ride and a high-speed
jetboat trip on the Shotover River. It’s paradise for the fun-loving,
back-flipping adrenaline junkie, but a hell of a long way to go for a
heart-stopping quick fix.
Closer to home, Chamonix will give you all the paragliding, climbing and
rafting your pumping heart could hope for, but why bother with the flights,
the transfers and the French for “I’m too young to die” when on our very
shores – in Scotland’s central Highlands – lie the two new kids on the
adventure-sports block, Dunkeld and Aviemore.
How to do it: in Dunkeld, about an hour’s drive north of Edinburgh, the
go-to guys are Nae Limits (0845 017 8177, www.naelimits.co.uk),
who offer a ridiculous all-you-can-eat buffet of adrenaline sports,
including rafting, tubing, rap running (like SAS abseiling), canyoning,
cliff-jumping and sphering in and around the Tay, Tummel and Orchy rivers
and the wonderfully craggy Lower Bruar canyon. Multi-activity days (two
activities and lunch) cost £90. National Express East Coast (0845 722 5225, www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com)
has return rail fares from London to Dunkeld from £45.
SAILING
DON’T go to the Caribbean – £121
DO go to Croatia – £74
Fanned by friendly 20-knot winds, and sheltering yachts from the prevailing
southeasterly swell, the British Virgin Islands are justifiably the
must-have stamp on any sailor’s log. This doesn’t come cheap, however:
sailing’s a millionaire’s game, and beach bars out there know it. Throw in
transatlantic flights and you may start to wonder if there’s an alternative.
There is: Croatia. For a start, it’s out of the eurozone – a seafood platter
and beer won’t set you back more than a tenner. And you’ll have more than
1,000 islands to sail between, with those wonderfully preserved walled
cities to moor beside, as well as some of the warmest, most sheltered waters
in Europe.
How to do it: Sunsail (0844 463 6817, www.sunsail.co.uk)
has seven nights’ sailing in a six-berth yacht, from Dubrovnik to the
Elafiti islands, Mljet and Korcula, from £519, including flights with
Thomsonfly to Dubrovnik and transfers; meals not included, skipper £95 per
day. A comparable package to the British Virgin Islands costs £849.
LUXURY INDIAN TRAIN
DON’T go on the Palace on Wheels – £449
DO go on the Golden Chariot – £320
If there were ever a case of paying for a name, it’s for the Palace on Wheels.
Built for Rajputs and viceroys (with every refurb, it looks more and more
like a maharajah’s harem), it does a seven-day loop of Rajasthan that’s like
a Who’s Who of India’s tourist icons. Taj Mahal, Jaipur, Udaipur, they’re
all there – and, boy, do they cost.
Though hardly a snip by Indian rail prices, the Golden Chariot is considerably
cheaper than its more celebrated counterpart. It has more luxury than you
could possibly need, including WiFi and satellite television, a lounge car
styled on Mysore Palace, even a gym car with ayurvedic massage rooms. On a
loop of Karnataka from Bangalore, there are stops at the magnificent ruins
of Hampi and the exquisite temples of Belur and Halebid, with a day each in
Mysore, Goa and the Nagarhole National Park, home to wild elephants, tigers
and more than 300 species of bird.
How to do it: Bales Worldwide (0845 057 0600, www.balesworldwide.com)
has seven nights on the Golden Chariot and one in Bangalore for £2,560;
seven nights on the Palace on Wheels, with one in Delhi, cost £3,590. Both
packages include flights, transfers and meals on board.
