Berk Erk, I'm flying to Glasgow on Friday, and with this post, I've deeidcd to take the afternoon off and head to Stansted early instead of just winging it and hoping for the best.I'm not British, so I always get the 20 questions on my Canadian passport, UK visa up to the colour of my underpants, so better get there very very early this time Flying is just no fun anymore with all this security stuff I might just start hitchhiking to places

Berk know your not being funny. Thanks, never heard of that plugin and I will look into it, and I’ll dig some links out toihngt. I am playing devils advocate on this post because I would be a hypocrite if I said everyone should book with an ATOL agent when I book my own accommodation/flight holidays. What do we do? Good question. I think it is a good topic to discuss, but, I doubt regulation will happen because the companies concerned will not be wanting to pay out association fee’s but travel agencies have to, so why are these companies any different? It’s also interesting that there’s hotel chains and accommodation only / rental sites reading this but none of them have jumped into the conversation. It’ll be good to get their opinion. I don’t pretend to be an expert on these things, but I do like getting discussions started on topics people in the industry are afraid of having.

Vanitha need to be so hostile. Everyone has an oopiinn and I welcome comments about other such myths about destinations that people have come across on their travels.@ MurrayI hate to mention this but these myths are very much still alive. All of them were mentioned to me when I told people I was thinking about visting Turkey. The post is slighly tongue in cheek, but the myths of cheap Turkey, and it being dirty are the oopiinns of some.

Chopie The problem is, as the Chinese sanyig goes, point a finger at a person and 3 point back at you!I just checked the Hotels Combined web site featured on your web site and searched for a hotel in my home town of SaiGon, VietNam.Selecting the maps for both the Caravelle and the Sheraton I found that the displayed locations are kilometres off their correct locations!If a web site can't get the location right, why would anyone trust it to handle a reservation?

Yuliana I think all travel copnamies should start to value their single travellers more and all have accommodation / deals / packages on their sites without ludicrous single supplements.. Most sites seem to base their travel on 2 people and as a single person you end up paying at least double.So not being treated like an alien because I am travelling alone would be a good start (I know I am probably generalising a bit, but it does seem less user friendly as a single traveller with less deals available

Abdo OK here's mine Australia is in reality much sparesr than you think 85% of people live on 1% of the land area (ie along the coast), so 99% of the country has less people than anywhere else in the world! (well this second bit is my guess, but I reckon it's right!). If you want to travel somewhere where you'll see nobody, outback Oz is it.

Patt I have recently been binookg tickets for our honeymoon and I booked my fiances ticket using what will be her married name. Unfortunately I since found out that due to visa's in Africa we have had to keep her passport in her maiden name as we could not apply for them with a post dated passport.What this means is that we have tickets in my surname and her passport in her surname. If we travel with our wedding certificate is there any chance of this being okay and us being allowed onto the flight.I am hoping that this sort of thing happens all of the time

Rohan I always look for a hidloay rental property when ever I go any where, they are great value and if you shop around you can usually also get a great location too. We spent 10 days recently in Madeira right next to THE best hotel for MUCH less than an ordinary hotel. Some city apartments rent out for a minimum of 3 nights so I check out to see if the region that I am visiting has any self catering accommodation on offer, even found a great deal on a villa in Luxor that sleeps 10 for my next visit, can't wait!

Shekinah Apart from the obvious drop in the ecnoomy, falling a3 versus €, job insecurity, house price falls etc etc .XL gone, The big four now down to 2 and cutting as much capacity as they can and pretty much out of the low cost scheduled flights market now.Improved email and other marketing (so people aren't searching, they are going direct to airline) and the fact that the remaining airlines are pretty well established ( so people know who flies where) probably means a lot less searches involved for the same amount of flights booked.Or maybe everyone was just out at the Woolworths closing down sale?

Junin I write and manage this blog in my spare time [it's 7am when I am reinpylg to this] so I do not always get the time to reply to every comment, especially when receive a couple of hundred every week.@ SiiriFrom my experiences, yes check-in can change it for you. I had the right spelling of my surname on my ticket, but the wrong surname on my boarding pass, so the check-in staff must input the information themselves on some airlines to generate the boarding pass.I wouldn't worry about the status. I hope you have a great trip, and please do report back.@ John That's really interesting about your case. I am going to drop you an email tonight for more information as this is something I would like to feature on the blog. It seems so unfair that consumers are asked to pay double for a ticket due to a small mistake.

Sunita I don't understand. Didn't airnlie executives go to Buisness School? Don't they know a happy customer is a repeat customer. I'm tired of the BS they put people through.1. When I by a non-stop ticket I want a non-stop flight. I don't want to be put on a stop over flight.2. When I pick a flight with a certain time frame for arrival I don't want to be put on a flight that arrives 2 hours later. Don't tell me that the a 2 hour window is nothing. Arriving in Florida at 10:30 will allow you to at least spend the afternoon by the pool. When you arrive at 2:15 your afternoon is shot as well. When you arrive home at 10:30 pm then you can be home by 11:30. But when arriving at 12:00 am then you don't get in until 1:30 and forget having the kids go to school.Stop lying to people. We only have seats next to the exits so we can't assignthe seats until check in This means we over booked the filght and we're going to have to bump people. Just take this seat for now and we'll straighten otu everything once we're in the air Means sit down and shut up. So what if your 3 year old kid is twenty ailses up. Who cares. When we're in the air will be to busy to deal with you The airnlies don't get that good customer service means $$ in repeat business.

Evhy i was stuck in NYC last week and luckily got on a vigrin flight to get back couple of hundred pounds later.in an effort to recover expenses i just called my credit card company (hsbc master card) and they said i should take it up with zoom as they would not cover it.most of the reports/web sites are confident i should claim against the CC company but mine didnt help at all.could someone clearify please?

Mike We were caught mid-trip when Zoom went under. Virgin Atlantic and British Airways were the two creriras Zoom mentioned having a deal with to re-book. Virgin gave us very reasonable one-way rates to get back from New York (with proof of the Zoom tickets), while British Airways were going to charge a ridiculous amount. So shop around for who gives the best alternative we booked ours the day after the announcement was made to fly on the 31st of August.Joan

Hawaii you may not have seen the travel trade press in that RyanAir are alcviety moving against anyone booking their flights anyway BUT via their website and have cancelled booking made via screenscraping websites. So, a consumer can ONLY book via their website. Although they are (very) cheap RyanAir are begining to lose the plot a bit. Also not all travel agents carry an ATOL there is no need for them to do so, unless they are tour operating that is, self packaging. Otherwise ABTA and if they choose to, an IATA licence is enough. Now, there are even several variations of ATOL's depending on what you do. Indeed, rthe rules are so complex that not even all travel agents understand them, so heavnes help the general public.