jjthefridge

Hi,
we're planning on going on a reckie to Aus later this year prior to applying for visa's i havn't got family out there, whats generally best booking packages or booking flights/accomadation seperatly. We've currently got brisbane in mind the climate sounds appealing, we don't know whether its best to spend 3 weeks in brisbane or multi centred visit. Money wise whats the best options?

forkandknife

Good question mate, i am trying to book accomodation in the Scarborough area of Brisbane, this is my process, once sorted and got availability feedback on accomodation, then confirm flights, times and book, then confirm and book accomodation, then book car hire! Sounds easy, but i tell you, its not, need to plan military style i tell you. Its even worse when you are being told that you are doing it all wrong?

Good luck mate!

Hills Boy

We'd visited Oz several times on holiday before moving here. We didn't have kids then and all we did was book our international flights and then sorted everything out (hotels, car hire, internal flights, etc.) while we were here. Although we had a rough plan of what we wanted to do each time, we wanted to keep things flexible. We got good deals on accom. in the off season.

Funky Monkey

Hi.

I have been twice now and used Thomas Cook for flights. We go one way this year and we looked at direct airline prices with Singapore and Thomas Cook were only more expensive by a very small margin (use their online site and take the price given into the high street as online booking is more complicated if things go wrong).

We booked accomodation ourselves on the second trip but we knew the hotel and this was much much cheaper,again you might be better to use the travel agent otherwise it could be the bates motel.
Regarding a car I can only say book it yourself. We did both times using thrifty and the price was much cheaper, you will tend to get a very standard car through the travel agents which is fine but you will probably have a lot of luggage e.t.c. It was all done online and all I had was a piece of paper and was £600.00 lighter but it was absolutely fine.

Good luck you will love the holiday .

Buzzy--Bee

Here's my reccie report of Brisbane if you're interested -

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=412993

Buzzy