Deals for Mothers day (UK)

Thanks to the MoneySavingExpert for this tip...

Get a discount equivalent to your age for bookings on Mothers Day in the up-market Malmaison Hotels throughout the UK. If you take your 90 year old Mother, there will be 90% off the room-rate. Not limited to Mothers, (probably due to sex-discrimination laws...) any oldies can get the discount, but note that the full room rates for this promotion start at £170 (usually £99 online) - but if you're 100 or over, you can stay for free!!!

Last time this promotion ran, a 98 year-old managed to secure a £235 room for just £4.50...
Hotels available in:
Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Edinburgh (pictured above), Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford and Reading.
Note that Man City and Liverpool both play at home on Sunday...if your Mum likes a bit of footie!!

Getting away for Christmas

There is nothing like leaving all the trappings of home behind you and heading off to a hotel to be waited on hand and foot over Christmas – Let the hotel take the strain of getting everything trimmed up properly, getting the meals made on time and entertaining the family whilst you put your feet up and have that relaxing break that you so thoroughly deserve.
Not everyone wants to get away at Christmas, but even those who are family-oriented can assemble all their far-flung family members at one hotel and all be relaxed together instead of squashed into one house, getting under one another's feet and then dispersing off to various hotels at different points in the evening.
This type of service is becoming more and more popular and is available all over the country in places like East Sussex Hotels amongst others.
These hotels offer the chance to not only relax but to treat your loved ones to a well-catered Christmas with no cooking and washing-up duties to be argued over and no unwanted callers or phone-calls to disturb your family time. You can be as far away from the distractions of the mobile, the house phone and the computer as you really want to and not feel guilty about turning your back on the technology that calls us away from the family at Christmas.
Many hotels offer great deals over Christmas to keep their rooms full and it may be no where near as expensive as you might at first imagine. I am using a hotel close to my family on Christmas day so that we are able to have our own space whilst still being close to family and friends – we can even entertain there if we want to, but the biggest advantage is that we can get the little one to sleep at a reasonable time in peace and quiet.

Ryanair pull out of Fuerteventura

Ryanair are stopping their flights to Fuerteventura after January 2009. The reasons cited are centred around non-fullfilment of agreements with local businesses, but some in the trade believe that it could be due to plummeting sales since Ryanair stopped using agents to sell seats.
UK travellers will be limited to booking with Thomas cook or Thomson for flights to Fuerteventura after next month.
In other news, Thomas Cook are getting ready to complete a deal to buy 'Medhotels' from Lastminute.com. This deal is likely to allow lastminute.com to sell Thomas Cook products, a portfolio it has not previously had access to.

Container Hotel

In these days of carbon footprints and recycled everything, it should be no surprise to find people building hotels out of old containers... This is not just a quirky one-off, as major UK hotel chain Travel lodge are pioneering this with a hotel in Uxbridge - I really want to find an excuse to go and stay there!!
For some time, Travel lodge have been investigating and developing the idea of sleeping pods (this from the company who actually have a Director of Sleep - a job for which I fear I may be over-qualified!)
Obviously this type of accommodation is aimed at the more utilitarian travel for business rather than family holidays, but as this type of travel forms a major chunk of UK hotel revenue - it's an avenue worth pursuing from a commercial angle. It is this type of progress that may end up saving the planet, a 'green' idea that is commercially viable.. Ultimately green taxes do nothing to make any type of significant difference, practical recycling for a profit makes much more sense.