Travel currency is available at good rates at the moment if you are going to Egypt, Dubai or Thailand.

The United Kingdom’s Post Office’s Travel Money Monitor reported January currency purchases going up by 17% for the Egyptian pound, 23% for the United Arab Emirates Dirham and 45% for the Thai baht.

However the British Pound is still weak and you may want to look at ways of getting around that before considering you travel plans. For instance many people who went from Britain to Canada to see the Winter Olympics suffered as the pound was very low to the Canadian dollar.

There are prepaid currency cards which can guarantee you against any sudden currency dips, such as the FairFX or the Caxton FX.

These cards can be topped up over the phone or online making them a great deal. Although many high street and online currency dealers say that they give commission free travel currency, the commission is usually built into the exchange rate.

Peter Harrison at moneysupermarket.com said: “Using an appropriate travel currency product can save holiday makers a packet and there are several different options which are available to any savvy travellers.”

The prepaid currency cards can save you from getting charged by your bank for overseas transaction fees. These fees usually run at about 3 per cent and with ATM fees of anywhere up to £4 to consider as well, a prepaid currency card makes a lot of sense.

One way to ensure that you are not overspending is to go to a country which is outside of the European Union where you are more than likely to get better value for money. Despite the recession Europeans are still very keen to take their holidays as long as they can get value for money.


Jonathan Cudworth, the Expedia travel company director of product management, said: “By booking flights and hotels together customers can make their money go further.  “They can also pinch the pennies by visiting destinations that offer the best currency exchange rates and by ensuring that additional hotel costs are kept to a minimum.”

Although travel currency is constantly fluctuating, until recently the United States has counted as one of these good value travel currency destinations.

Expensive travel luggage has to be one of the biggest wastes of money. The only thing worse than losing your luggage is when the bag that helds all your belongings was also valuable. Coming from the Caribbean, lost luggage in transit is a way of life. One of the main inter Caribbean airlines is LIAT, known to locals as Luggage In Another Terminal.

Most passengers who spend money on their travel bags do so to show off, and to make people think that they are well-to-do and successful. But there could be one good reason for getting the new Tumi range of pricey travel bags. They come in a hard to miss range of exotic colours. That means that if your luggage does get lost you can at least say that it is distinctive and easy-to-spot.


One luggage thief was recently apprehended in America with over one thousand travel bags stacked up in his garage. This news came at around the same time that airlines in the United States had vowed to get tougher on baggage security. You only have to walk into any baggage reclaim area of any airport in the US to know that stealing bags would be a piece of cake. Even if you were to get caught you can just play the old, sorry, 'I thought it was my bag' routine.

Most of the thieves are not so brazen though. They don't try to steal the whole bag, but just a few choice items out of it on the way. Airport staff who are on low wages and dissatisfied with their jobs can remove an expensive camera from your bag easily without getting caught. The only way to stop them is to make sure that you keep your most valuable items in your hand luggage. Even then it is important to keep a good eye on them.

Lost travel luggage is a problem which is on the increase around the world. While a few years ago there were a recorded 30 million bags lost, that figure has now shot up to 40 million bags. The best ways to avoid your bag getting lost are to arrive early for check in, make sure that your bag has the right handling instructions on it and place some ID on the inside and the outside of the bag.

The airlines say that most bags are reunited with their owners (eventually) and that only one in 200,000 bags is never found. One way to get bargain travel luggage could be to go to Scottsdale in Alabama where the major American lost luggage depot is located.

Most of these bags are never reunited with their owners and instead re-homed thanks to a cut-price fire sale. If they can't reunite the bag within 90 days or sell it then it gets given away. And then the whole cycle starts again the next time the bag is used.

Cyprus has a tourism problem. When the Foreign Commonwealth Office describes what is supposed to be a top vacation spot as a place where people drive badly with no property security whatsoever then it is not a glowing reference.

To quote the FCO site –

• Many British nationals have experienced serious problems associated with the purchase of property in Cyprus.
• Driving standards are poor. You should drive with care and caution.
• There is an underlying threat from terrorism.  Attacks, although unlikely, could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers.

Although this property problem is part of a larger political one which is unavoidable, the island really needs to buck its ideas up. Cyprus is far more expensive than Spain and yet twice the distance to travel by plane. When you consider that a half hour taxi journey in Cyprus costs 70 Euros and a pint of beer in the capital costs 4.6 Euros then this is certainly not a cost effective place to travel to. So you would think that people in Cyprus would be putting their efforts into promoting tourism to make up for the prices? Wrong. Although there are some very friendly people here and some lovely local hotels, on the whole people try to rip you off.

At Youkoso sushi restaurant in Paphos on the Tomb of the Kings Road we were charged 24 Euros for some microscopic pieces of sushi. When I complained about the sushi size and price the owner looked me straight in the face and said what good quality sushi it was, even though it was composed of a decaying crab stick and some tinned lumpfish, which costs about 1.30 Euros, in the sushi rolls. We returned it and it went back in the fridge for the next sucker to eat. There were also two side dishes in small containers that had not even been filled up. One was a beef dish and one was a mushroom dish. I swear they used about a finger sized strip of beef and one mushroom to make the whole thing.  Youkoso is owned by Cypriots and they are the stingy kind and not the nice kind.To their credit they did give us a refund.
At hotels in Limassol they charge you top dollar for the rooms in a four star hotel and then have the cheek to charge extra for the facilities which should be included. Four star hotels which charge 120 Euros per night should have free internet and sauna but hotels such as the Mediterranean Beach Hotel charge you five Euros extra for each. If that’s not a way to put off customers from returning I don’t know what is.