A calendar, not a countdown
When It Is Cheaper
No clock, no seat counter, no struck out price. What follows is the year, month by month, with what genuinely falls in price and what you give up to get it. Where something is cheap because of a risk, the risk is named.
What is not on this page
- A countdown clock
- none. Reload one of those on somebody else's site and watch the number start again, which tells you what it was worth
- A count of seats left
- none. Nobody here can see an operating company's inventory in real time, so nobody here can honestly print a number
- A price with a line through it
- none. A former price is only honest if it was really charged, regularly, for a substantial period, and we do not keep prices we can prove that about
- A notice that somebody just booked
- none, ever
- A discount code
- none. A code implies this office controls the price. It does not; it controls which company gets asked and whether the figure you get has everything in it
The year, month by month
| Month | What falls | What you give up |
|---|---|---|
| January | Everything except Quebec, which rises | Short days in Europe, and weather that closes things |
| February | Europe and the Greek islands are at their lowest | Many island hotels are shut. The ones open are the ones open all year |
| March | Andalusia and Morocco are excellent value | Rain is likely and evenings are cold inland |
| April | Nothing much, and Holy Week raises Andalusia and Colombia sharply | The weeks around Easter are the worst value in the year in three of our nine |
| May | Peru opens; Scotland and the islands are at their best value | Nothing, honestly. May is the answer more often than any other month |
| June | Still good in Scotland and Peru | Europe begins filling and prices with it |
| July | Nothing falls. Ireland in this band stops working | Beds fill, and the arrival band is the wrong band |
| August | Nothing falls anywhere we work | Heat inland, full ferries, and the highest rates of the year |
| September | Europe drops from the second week; the islands are at their best | The first week is still August prices |
| October | The best value of the year in Morocco, Andalusia and the Danube | Days shorten quickly at the end |
| November | Cheap almost everywhere | Weather, and shorter opening hours at everything you came to see |
| December | Quebec rises; Colombia rises sharply from mid month | The holiday weeks are the second worst value in the year |
Where cheap means risky, said plainly
- Puerto Rico and the Caribbean coast, late in the hurricane season. The lowest figures on this site sit here. The risk is real, the operating companies price for it, and if your week cannot move it is a gamble with your only holiday. If you can travel at short notice and you know what you are accepting, it is the cheapest week we sell.
- Colombia and Ireland in their peak weeks. Not a price risk but a band risk: the arrival band depends on beds being available the same afternoon, and in those weeks they are not. We will move you to a different band or a different month rather than sell you the same trip into a wall.
What we never do about a date
Nothing on this site carries a deadline set by us. Where an operating company has held a rate until some date, your written proposal prints that date and prints whose it is.