Virgin holidays reduced forward booking

Apologies if in the wrong section.

Went into Virgin Holidays website yesterday to look at fly drive prices for our trip next November (2020)

There seems to have been a change as you now cannot search further forward than August 2020, I.e. 11 months in advance

Looks like it’s just where you were searching for may be on stop sale as I can search and get results for November and December 2020

That's strange as we were able to book a holiday for late-September 2020 at the Virgin Holidays store at the Trafford Centre over the weekend. The initial agent who got us a drink whilst waiting for an agent to become available thought it wouldn't be possible to book that far in advance, but I assume she must have been getting confused with booking VS flights or something else. We even had the option to book car hire, but we decided against it for the time being as I'm going to shop around when the other car hire firms open for bookings later this month.

If the website still isn't giving you prices and if you're near a Virgin Holidays store, it's worth popping in to see what they can do.

[mitchja]

One thing to bear in mind is that if you pay for a V Hols booking using your VS MasterCard, you will only get the double miles if you book online or over the phone.

Any bookings made in retail stores only earn the standard miles.

No idea if they have closed the loophole yet... but if you went to a Virgin Holidays store within a Debenhams, you used to be able to pay the balance of your holiday using Debenhams gift vouchers.

It was quite easy to find discount codes to get the gift vouchers a bit cheaper / use a salary sacrifice scheme to get them cheaper & make a saving on the holiday.

That said, many Virgin Holidays packages are not over cheap to start off with.

One thing to bear in mind is that if you pay for a V Hols booking using your VS MasterCard, you will only get the double miles if you book online or over the phone.

Any bookings made in retail stores only earn the standard miles.

Which seems stupid really, especially considering how VH moved towards direct sales only a few years ago instead of also selling via other travel agents and in an age where bricks-and-mortar retail is on the wane. Call me old fashioned, but there are certain purchases/scenarios where I feel more comfortable dealing with somebody face-to-face instead of remotely to ensure there's no room for misinterpretation, as well as being able to play with different options together.

That said, many Virgin Holidays packages are not over cheap to start off with.

I guess it depends what you're after and where you're going. I've commented here before how a few years ago I booked two hotels via VH in Florida for September 2016 which was cheaper to start with versus booking direct. This later turned out to be an act of brilliance after the pound collapsed post-Brexit referendum meaning it would have been a lot more expensive had I booked direct and paid at the hotel.

At this time, I'm also quite wary of booking US hotels directly given the poor GBP/USD rate which is sadly showing no signs of improving anytime soon...for British travellers at least.

I'd add I am quite happy to book the USD rate in advance VS075. An advantage of having a USD and GBP bank account, and moving enough money over to cover a few years holidays when the rate was "better". We top it up on average once a year. I'm no currency trader, but knew ahead of the first Brexit date that prices only likely to go down due to the coverage from the FT... So we just paid the entire work bonus to USD at a "decent" 1.34 earlier this year.

That said, I generally book "flex" cancellable USD rates in advance for US trips, not "agency" or website prices (direct with casino/or Hilton). As quite typically if for somewhere like LAS you book a month out, you'll generally beat any flex rates by rebooking closer. Worst case you pay the price you booked at (which you are happy with) - best case a better rate.

On topic for this - wife had also noted the lack of reduced forward booking from Virgin Holidays - as she used this as a benchmark for what we "should" pay - it is a thing, MCO is not impacted massively, but other destinations are. I imagine Virgin Holidays took a massive loss this year on the currency movement so are hedging.