Category: The Art of Travel

Phone and Data Roaming for Aussie Travellers

Phone and Data Roaming for Aussie Travellers In just three weeks Jill and I will be begin our 2016...

Picking a good hotel

If you prefer hotels in a chain your task is easy. However, if you are using a 3rd party booking system to find a hotel you will want to look more carefully.

Did you know that you can get room upgrades, free nights and some nice freebies with hotel loyalty programs? Just like airlines, hotel loyalty programs follow a tier system (e.g. silver, gold, platinum). The more you stay the higher your tier and the greater your benefits.

Why Choose Major Hotel Chains

We nearly always choose major hotel chains for our accommodation when travelling. Large international hotel chains make up more than ten thousand of properties all over the globe. For travellers, chain hotels offer reliability and known standards.

Travel maps to make it easy

Travel maps are designed to make it easy to find your way around. The trick is to not wait until you get there to study the map!

Ground transport for travellers

You’ve been doing your research and you have a list of places that you would like to see. Your next challenge is to work out what order to visit them and your ground transport to get to them all.

Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tours

A popular tourist service in cities today is a double decker, open top Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour. We call them HOHOs for short.

Essential travel research for savvy travellers

A smooth trip starts with some essential travel research: Weather, rainfall and rain days, sunset time, population, language, currency.

Immediate Flight Upgrades vs Last Minute Lottery

Depending on the airline, there are “immediate flight upgrades” and there is what is little better than a “last minute lottery”. Choose your airline loyalty carefully!

Frequent Flyer Points – the currency of savvy travellers

Frequent Flyer Points are almost a currency of their own. What you have to understand is the “exchange rate” and how to best spend them.

Fly Business Class – it’s worth it

We look for value not for price. When we travel, we nearly always fly business class. We think it is good value.
Let’s review the benefits of flying business class in words that the airlines can’t use.

Choosing and Booking Flights

When choosing and booking flights, choose any TWO of: Preferred airlines, Shortest transit time and Lowest Cost. Sorry! you can’t have all three.