Hi everyone

I’ve been working on some more individual / tailored pages for the villa directory on VillaSeek.com. The eventual aim is to get an easy-to-navigate page for every region that we list, which links to articles here on the blog, and pulls in some more useful info about the region. If anybody has regions they’d particularly like me to focus on, drop a comment on this blog and I’ll add those… within a couple of weeks there will be a tailored page for every region.

As an example of some of the pages I’ve got up and running take a look at the listings pages for luxury villas in the Caribbean, and holiday villas near Disney…. Do drop me a comment and let me know any improvements… I’ll be working on getting all these up and running in the coming weeks.

Tom

Ski Train - courtesy of Flickr User McGeez

The Guardian has published an interactive guide aimed at helping you get to ski resorts by train. It lists 10 train-accessible resorts. It’s a little bit fiddly, but clicking on the thumbnails below the main picture on their guide, brings up more info on that ski resort, and enables you to see a map of the journey from station to resort.

Many of the resorts are accessible by Eurostar. So you board a train at St Pancras, go through the Channel Tunnel, and most often change at Paris for a train bound towards the slopes.

For example, to get to Montgenèvre, you could board the 5.30pm Eurostar from St Pancras, before changing to the Briançon-bound sleeper train at Paris. From there, a morning bus takes you to the resort itself. The whole journey, from London to the slopes, takes around 14 hours. And you get a good night’s sleep on the train, and avoid long waits at airports, and all the hassle of getting out to Heathrow or one of the regional airports.

And it’s probably a bit less of a hassle to take your skis on the train, too!

Irish airline RyanAir frequently have sales where it’s possible to bag a one-way flight from the UK to continental Europe (or sometimes further) for as little as 1p. The catch is that, for most credit and debit cards, they’d slap on a £5 fee for each journey.. meaning that the minimum you’d pay for a return journey would be £10.   And that’s not including any extra fees if you wanted to take extra baggage, check in at the airport… at one point RyanAir considered charging a fee to use the toilet during the journey.

But for savvy travellers, it was always possible to avoid the Ryanair credit card charges, and really get flights for 1p. To do this, you could use a Visa Electron card. Well, that was until yesterday. Now, RyanAir will charge the same £5 per journey, to people who pay with Electron Cards.

But there is a new way to avoid the charges. Ryanair can’t claim to offer “flights from 1p each way” unless there’s a way to pay for them without any hidden fees. They’ve just changed the payment method this applies to. People who pay with a prepay mastercard can get the flights without paying extra for card processing charges.

According to money saving site MoneySavingExpert.co.uk, the best value card is from ICE. There’s a 2% fee and the minimum amount you can load it with is £100. But it could well be worth it for frequent travellers.

I’m off to apply for one now. I’ll let you know how it goes!

The Thailand and India section

Hi everyone

Just to let you know, I have rebranded our Asia Pacific section on Villaseek, to better reflect the villa listings within the section. It’s now simply the Thailand and India section. You can also access the two countries directly, by clicking through to Thailand and India.

So, the change doesn’t actually affect any of the villas in the section, but hopefully will make it clearer to people who are looking for self-catered accommodation in Thailand and India.

Holiday Villas and Cottages Magazine on MyeBook.com

There are several ways to read our paper-based sister publication, Holiday Villas and Cottages magazine. The most common is in popular news agents, such as WH Smiths. Or you might stumble upon it in the waiting room of a doctor’s, dentist’s, hairdresser’s, or health club.

But we’ve also been putting copies online. The usual way to read the magazine online is via Zmags — and you can always read the latest issue at the magazine’s website. More recently, we’ve been playing about with putting online issues on another virtual magazine publisher, myebook.com. The site allows you to flick through a virtual copy of the magazine and comment on the articles. You can read the latest issue via myebook.

We’re also really happy to announce that a previous issue of Holiday Cottages magazine has now reached over 12,000 views. So we’re looking forward to adding future issues onto the platform and reaching new audiences for the magazine.

I was interested to read Elisa’s blog post 10 days ago, about Skyscanner’s massive rate of growth. I’ve been using the site for a few years now, and it really excels as a way to find cheap flights. They’ve been rolling out several improvements recently, including adding localised versions of their site to attract international traffic.

It’s had a few stops and starts — for example, Ryanair blocked Skyscanner from displaying information on Ryanair flights a year or so ago. But this has all seemingly been ironed out. When used in conjunction with Ryanair’s occasional penny flights sales, it really comes into its own.

Ryanair’s own website is pretty depressing to use — and it can be hard to find the cheapest flights .The great thing about Skyscanner is that it can display a graph of a whole month of flights — so if you’re flexible about where and when you go, you can get a pretty good deal.

For example, I flew from Liverpool to Oslo last week for just a penny (including all the taxes). I then flew back from Oslo to Edinburgh (for a fiver) before getting the train back to Manchester.

There are a few catches when planning a trip like this — for example, to get that price you have to pay on electron card, and you can only take hand luggage. Plus, we were flying to Oslo Torp, which is 110km away from Oslo — and the bus there and back costs around £33.

Still, Skyscanner makes those elusive penny flights reachable—and with a bit of creative thinking and flexibility, you can plan a pretty interesting holiday on a shoe string.

We’ve got an expanding villa sales section on Villaseek. At the moment, we’re listing vacation properties for sale in the USA, Spain, Turkey and Cyprus. There’s also a collection of properties for sale in Tuscany.

The Spanish villa sales section is particularly busy, with properties including a large Townhouse in Orba, with its own private pool, situated near Denia. There’s also a collection of villas for sale in Mallorca and Menorca.

We keep adding other properties, so do check back from time to time…

One of Villa Parade

Independent villa company Villa Parade have bolstered their collection of villas in order to cope with increased demand from holiday makers wanting a break on the Mediteraranean cost, adding 40 new holiday properties. Their collection of holiday accommodation includes new villas in Puerto Pollenca and Pollensa Old Town in Mallorca and Albufeira in Portugal.

Villa Parade’s new properties include a traditional family retreat complete with hot tub and views over Pollenca Old Town, and a large property with 5 en-suite bathrooms situated high over the Port of Alcuidia, Mallorca.

Nick Bartholet, operations director at Villa Parade said:  “We’ve introduced twenty new villas in Mallorca, eight in Portugal and twelve in Kefalonia this year as we’re increasingly finding that families and friends are finding villa holidays much more popular due to the value that can be had, while still enjoying high quality accommodation.   Villa bookings were up for us in 2009, so we’re delighted to bring more choice for British holidaymakers for 2010.

“Mallorca and Portugal are always firm favourites with British holiday makers as they’re easily accessible and have a great climate, however we’re finding that the Greek island of Kefalonia is becoming more and more popular with couples and families thanks to its idyllic beaches, unspoilt countryside and the warm and friendly local residents.”

You can save £25 through VillaSeek by using saving code HVVP1 online at Villa Parade‘s website, or call 0844 72 00 40. Villas are available from £395 per week, excluding flights.

Villa Parade are also offering holidaymakers a second week at half price on a selection of villas plus they are providing guaranteed car hire (for grade B vehicle) on bookings made before 31 March 2010. See Villa Parade’s website and individual villa listings for more details.

Delta Aircraft - taken by flickr user hdport (creative commons)

Last week, Delta Airlines announced it was pulling the direct route from Manchester airport to New York JFK. Well, today American Airlines has stepped in to fill the gap. The new service will begin in May 2010.

It’s a summer service – so there will be daily flights until the end of September 2010.

(Photo from Flickr.com user Terry_Wha)

With all the news about possible high-speed trains running in England, it’s interesting to look at how other countries do it. Spain has been vigorously expanding its high-speed network over the last few years, and by 2010 will have most miles of high-speed track in Europe. Here’s an article from Holiday Villas and Cottages Issue 2, with some interesting tips on how you might use all this (together with a cheap flight-finder), to travel cheaply to a Spanish resort via Madrid: