Travel: Big chains chasing short break customers

May 30 2009 By Huddersfield Examiner

Tesco Travel Money (0845 600 6667 and www.tesco.com/finance) is offering 25 Clubcard points for every £250 of overseas currency bought instore.There are Travelodges well-placed for major attractions at Amesbury (for Stonehenge), St Austell (Eden Project), Penrith (for Lakeland), Skipton (Yorkshire Dales), Carlisle (Hadrian’s Wall) and Inverness (Loch Ness).

Travelodges also offer cream teas for 99p at top holiday location hotels, including a large scone, a pot of clotted Cornish cream, jams and a choice of teas.

At 52 Ibis hotels - mainly city centre and airport locations - guests get 30% off the standard online rate by booking 30 days in advance of their stay, which means rooms from £39. A popular destination in this offer will be the Ibis hotel in the heart of Edinburgh.

Shearings Holidays, with 47 locations across the UK, offers good value on midweek breaks for self-drivers: four nights’s dinner, B&B at The Ship & Castle in St Mawes looks tempting at £195, with the same stay on Loch Lomond from £170 and in the Imperial Hotel, Tenby, from £238.

Families ready for outdoor adventure before schools break up might also get a deal from Forest Holidays, with midweek self-catering stays in timber, glass-fronted cabins buried deep in the countryside from £229 for a total of six people - and activities including cycling, pony trekking, canoeing and fishing.

Two more Forest Holidays sites open in July, making a total of five from Scotland to Cornwall.

A survey by Tesco Travel Money claims British holidaymakers will keep holiday spending under tight control this summer: a third will avoid eating out altogether by booking a self-catering break, while 12% say they will spend "significantly less".

Tesco’s survey predicts travellers from the Midlands will keep the tightest grip by spending only £348 per week on holiday, against Yorkshire & Humberside, North-West and North-East (all £401), South East (£408), Scotland £415) and London (£495).