Winter sports vacations can be expensive, so I thought I’d post ten of my favourite money saving tips.
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Book in advance, you can often get a good discount. If staying more than 3 weeks in a ski area it can sometimes work out cheaper to buy a season pass with a substantial pre season discount.
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If you don’t want to book in advance, then why not leave it until the last minute and get some late booking offers.
Snowtrex , Holiday homes Interhome and others sell off their unsold accommodation with up to 30% discount in the last 2 weeks. Be flexible and if you are wanting to travel at school holidays don’t even bother trying this method. -
Book your transport well in advance. You will get the cheapest rail, bus, ferry and air fares.
Winter Sports
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Do a big shop away from the resort at a supermarket or better still a Farmers market. The price of food and goods at Winter Resorts has a massive mark up.
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Take sandwiches and a stainless steel flask for food / drink while out on the piste. You can even save time by eating on the long telecabin rides. That way you save by not eating in expensive restaurants in the resort and have more time to ride.
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Look at buying second hand skis or snowboards on ebay, SCUK or the SkiClub web sites. It will be cheaper than hiring at the resort.
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You can buy last seasons Ski Snowboard clothes cheaply at TK Maxx or sometimes ebay.
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Have a look at Annual Travel Insurance including Winter Sports, it can often work out cheaper. However whichever insurance you plan on buying, check the small print to ensure it covers the activities you intend carrying out.
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In many French resorts the Supermarket chain Sherpa has a number of schemes to help you save money. Firstly they will buy back unused, undamaged boxed, tinned food at the end of your week. Secondly they offer free hire of fondu and raclette equipment, all they need is a deposit.
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If you are travelling by car, you will find that snow chains are cheaper at the large supermarkets near the Alps than back home.
Coming next. 10 ways to spend a more sustainable Winter Sports break.
Tags: budget, chamonix, insurance, late booking, money saving, saving money, ski, ski equipment, skiing, snowboard, snowboard equipment, snowboarding, Winter Sports
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Twitter is an excellent tool if used responsibly. I am fairly new to the Twittersphere, but already I am finding some activities very annoying. Here is my Top 10 Terrible Tweets on Twitter.
Spoof Twitter profile
10. I am not going to start with Tweets but Profiles. How many times do you read; “I am an expert at SEO, Web2.0, blah, blah, blah. My site is rated No1 on blah , blah , blah”?
Come on who are you trying to kid? If you were that good, you would not be posting tweets with links to your site. If you are that good, then go and spend time with your family and let someone else Tweet for your company!
9.”I am listening to “Your song” on Blah.FM”.
To be honest I don’t care. All you are doing is Tweeting a plug for the online radio station. Now if you were to Tweet “Listening to: “I fought the Law, by the Clash”; I am reliving that failed bank raid, I carried out”. Then it might well catch my attention!
8. “Good morning, Thank you and welcome to all my new followers who joined over night”.
I really don’t like this. It comes across only a little better than the auto DM’s sent to new followers. This is just the thing that those operating pyramid follow schemes post everyday.
7. “RT @twitrant New web page: How Twitter can change the world. http;//www.twitrant.com/change_the_world.htm”
ReTweeting masses of Tweets to inflate your number of updates. Unless your followers are likely to be interested in a Tweet, don’t do it. If you can, say why you liked that the Tweet you are ReTweeting.
6. “ @twitrant New web page: How Twitter can change the world. http;//www.twitrant.com/change_the_world.htm Please Retweet this”.
Asking followers for ReTweets, MrTweets, followfridays, Stumbles. etc. I’m sure I don’t need to explain this. If the Tweets are good, then they will get Re Tweeted and if we think Tweeple or their web sites are worthy of recommendations, we will give them. Its a sure sign of a commercial outfit, when they ask for this.
5. “New web page: How Twitter can change the world. http;//www.twitrant.com/change_the_world.htm”
Twitter streams that are nothing more than an RSS feed of their owners web site. So you joined Twitter, but can’t actually be bothered to Tweet about anything, so instead you add a widget to your site to automatically Tweet your web pages. Sorry, you will have to try harder.
4. “Pandemic of copied news headlines”
Looking up the news sites and posting the latest news headline. There are a few Tweeple that do this every single day. They just get a news headline, make a TinyURL , then Tweet it. No thinking required.
My browser already has a BBC News Headlines button so I don’t need your Tweeted copy. Now if you were to give your reaction or feelings to that news maybe I would be interested.
3. “Look how wonderful I am, I have 2000 followers”.
Don’t you realise that all you need to do to get followers is to find out those who will most likely follow you back and follow them? Of course its also bad form to brag.
2. “A quotation on Twitter only needs Control C and Control V - John Williams 2009″.
Excessive use of quotations annoys me and I believe Twitter, as they have suspended accounts for excessive use. Looking up quotations is real easy on the Internet. Unless your quotation describes how you feel at a particular moment or reinforces a point, then don’t Tweet them. A long list of your favourite quotations just wastes bandwidth. Furthermore, as internet servers have quite substantial carbon footprints, they are hastening climate chaos.
1. “Click on the link and you’ll get thousands of followers”.
There are lots of pyramid follow schemes available for Twitter. As I said before all you need to do to get followers is to follow people, who will follow you back. Then you could have thousands are even hundreds of thousands following you. However you could also be following thousands of Tweeple as well. What good is that?
That’s my rant over. Actually, Twitter can be very useful and will only improve as stream filtering produces more relevant Tweets to your likes. Twibes seems like a good start in this direction, with Tweets grouped by like minded people and including up to three keywords. I am hopeful that Twitter will be an even better experience in the future. Which Tweets annoy you on Twitter? Where do you see the future of Twitter?
Tags: cut and paste, quotations, terrible, tweets, Twitter
Dogs, cats, perhaps even pet snakes , bring companionship and joy the their owner’s lives. Unfortunately, there have always been some who love their pets more than human beings. There are others who literally kill their pets with kindness by overfeeding them. Pets are ultimately a prisoner or slave to their owner. They are not free to roam, hunt or mate as they would choose.
It came as a surprise to learn on Twitter, that there is now a Pets only airline. Like many others I thought it was April 1st come early. I did some further research and found even bigger excesses. Hotels where dogs sleep in pyjamas in four poster beds. Where they have their own swimming pool and gym and where the hotel chef prepares meals for them. If you don’t believe me just put “dog luxury hotel” into a search engine.
Travel can open the mind and lets us see the world and its inhabitants in a fresh light and allows us to see the beauty of the planet we inhabit. Personally, I don’t see how pets can benefit from travel in this way. Of course they will enjoy playing on the beach and in the sea and they are unlikely to miss their owners if they are together. I have no problem with pet friendly hotels, even the budget chains in France allow pets. What I can’t come to terms with is pets wearing pyjamas and sleeping in four poster beds in rooms equipped with TV’s.
One commentary I read on the reason for the Credit Crunch was that spending had gone out of control. They quoted the array of Christmas gifts, costumes and even Christmas stockings for pets on sale as a sign that we had become addicted to spending for the sake of spending, even if it meant borrowing to fuel the addiction. It was reinforced by a visit before Christmas to a store in Cardiff where I saw the goods pictured below. All unnecessary and most likely not appreciated by the pets.
There is a big difference between pet friendly hotels and pet only airlines monogrammed pyjama wearing pets sleeping in four poster beds. A line must be drawn between ‘pet friendly’ and wasteful extravagance. Where would you draw it?
Tags: credit crunch, dog luxury hotel, pet airline, pet friendly travel
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