James Lever

Author: James Lever

To infinity and beyond

To infinity and beyond

I visited Singapore in 2018, and visited the ArtScience museum. Within the museum there is a permanent exhibit by teamLab which blew my mind. teamLab creates digital borderless art, one of the installations had a path through a mirrored room, creating the illusion of moving through space.

48h in Berlin (including travels with my father!)

I was attending a conference in Berlin, I had the pleasure of sharing my stay with my father. We flew from London Gatwick to the new Berlin Brandenburg airport. Upon arriving and getting through passport control, we bought an ABC train ticket and took the FEX train from Berlin Brandenburg to Berlin Central Station, and […]

Concorde

Concorde is one of the most elegant planes ever built. An engineering masterpiece which unfortunately due to consumer confidence and maintainability led to its premature end of service. Concorde was an anglo-french cooperation to build a supersonic aircraft, the only super sonic aircraft that made it into mainstream production. Concorde on Wikipedia Despite never flying […]

Missing emails in o365 outlook?

Missing emails in o365 outlook

If you’re missing emails in outlook, then its quite likely they’ve been quarantined via Microsoft exchange. To find these emails you need to go to the security portal (goto your o365 portal, then admin, then security)

Refugees living in the uk who are planning on travelling

In 2022 I asked two new joiners to plan a trip overseas. One of my team had refugee status and had a travel document. With this information known we planned and booked our trip, which unfortunately didn’t go to plan. A travel document is not the same as a passport. Before BREXIT the travel document […]

How to use google flights to find a holiday when you’re flexible on your destination.

How to use google flights to find a holiday when you're flexible on your destination.

In part 1, I showed you how to use google ITA to find dates for cheaper travel for a specific destination. But what if you want a holiday and are open to where you go? Broad destination search visit https://www.google.com/flights Click on “Explore destinations” at the bottom (https://www.google.com/travel/explore) Enter your departure point (leave “Where to?” […]

How to find great holiday deals (part 1)

How to find great holiday deals (part 1) To find deals you usually have to be a little flexible on dates or duration. Pricing often starts high when first published, but usually drop once the season begins, after which prices only go up. To find deals you need to understand the rules to find deals, book at the right time, and/or be flexible to find dates where prices are a little less. Some advice: 1 week school holiday dates are almost impossible to find deals, look at perhaps 5 nights vs 7. 2 week school holidays and summer breaks are a little easier as there’s a greater ability to be flexible on what date you depart. Saturday/Sunday are often the most expensive days to travel, by using the tips below you can find options for your next adventure. How travel is priced. Without giving away all the rules, travel is priced based upon rules, these rules are often based upon departure point, duration, and whether it contains a specific day of the week. For air travel you will be competing with a mix of business and leisure rates – there are some rules which differentiates you as a leisure customer rather than a business traveller. One of these rules is whether there is a Saturday night in your stay (this mostly applies to long haul) Example Sunday 2nd Oct – Sat 8th Oct Monday 3rd Oct – Sunday 9th Oct You can see that including a Saturday night makes the fare substantially less. So how do we find the best fare? we need to find the best date, and the best duration. Fortunately there is a tool we can use. Google ITA Matrix. Google ITA Matrix is the engine which powers google’s flight search, and it provides additional features. Performing a search using ITA matrix. goto https://matrix.itasoftware.com/search In the above we’ve entered LON (as London all) and NYC (all of New York). I’ve entered BA in routing codes, as in this example I just want to look at BA flights. Select “See calendar of lowest fares” and select the start date, and duration. ITA will return the cost for your search for every departure day in October. You’ll see departing on a Sunday has a much higher price than every day of the week. The cheapest date is 25th October. If you are flexible you can also add flexibility – for example 6-8 nights. Now the 31st is the cheapest date, but only if you stay longer than 6 nights Packages Lets look at the flight prices for August 2022 – I’m using economy class as an example. and now lets look at hotels (the below example is from hotels.com) So flight + hotel = 623 + 1276 = £1899 Travel agents (and many airlines) offer a package combining both flight and hotel – online you can visit expedia or BA holidays or just call your travel agent. Here’s an example of the above as a package. BA flight + hotel result You can see as a package is this substantially cheaper £1899 (if bought separately) vs £1356 – a £543 saving. Pros/Cons of package rates vs booking flight and Hotel separately. Separate bookings. Flights usually are required to pay in advance, hotels may be payable on arrival or pay upfront also for the best rates. These bookings are usually non-refundable. Package Holidays If a package contains more than 1 travel component it is protected by the package travel regulations. Travel travel regulations protect you in the event of disruption. Your agent will usually be bonded or protected via trust also – this means if the travel agent ceases trading your holiday will still go ahead. You can usually pay a deposit and will only need to pay the balance 6-8 weeks before departure. The deposit is non-refundable. The package may charge you extra for changes, compared to booking individually so weight that up. Your cancelation terms will likely be higher too. Your flight will usually come from a “package” allowance, and that might give you less tier points, less airmiles (you will still get some if the flight offers it). If you book via a hotel chain you usually will not get points as these are only available for buying direct. So weigh up the pro’s and cons – for me to lock in a price and only pay a deposit is a big benefit, but I dont usually then cancel or change my mind. Package rates usually give you a significant benefit over non-packaged rates. But one advantage is that you can usually book with a deposit vs paying the full amount. Package rates are available as the airline, hotel or both offer rates which can be sold to travel agencies for packages, they have a limited number of rooms/seats for this rate. For more tips see How to find a deal when you’re flexible and when you don’t yet know where to go.

To find deals you usually have to be a little flexible on dates or duration. Pricing often starts high when first published, but usually drop once the season begins, after which prices only go up. To find deals you need to understand the rules to find deals, book at the right time, and/or be flexible […]

San Selino, an affordable Norfolk broads boating adventure

I’m fortunate that we have relatives that live on the broads, but we never really experienced the broads as a tourist. In 2021, as uk hospitality was starting to recover we decided we would try something new, a broads holiday. We rented an inexpensive boat from Richardson Boating Holidays – our boat, San Selino was […]

12h in Agra, India

Whilst working in Hyderabad, my colleague Lalit, asked if I’d like to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Not wanting to turn a good offer down, we quickly put together a plan. Lalit proposed we could do it in a day, so we set off on the earliest flight leaving Hyderabad, and flew […]

48 in Dublin

As the ever avid traveller, I decided to visit Dublin, but this time with the family. We headed to LHR but didn’t have the best start, a 1h30 delay! We eventually got on our way, and checked into our Hotel – Hilton near St Stephens Green, we wandered into town and explored the area before […]

James Lever
The thoughts of a CPTO focused on strategy, technology and sustainability.
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