We bought a cheap £99 ‘surprise’ holiday package – and ended up swapping our hotel minutes within an hour of arriving
- Harriet Morphy-Morris decided to try out Wowcher’s £99 mystery holiday deal
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A couple who bought a £99 mystery holiday deal from Wowcher ended up disappointed after they arrived at their destination – and ended up changing hotels, WalesOnline reports.
Wowcher’s ‘Mystery Holiday deal’, which costs from £99, offers travellers return flights and a two-night hotel stay – but that catch is that you don’t know where you will be going until a couple of days before leaving.
Destinations included in the mystery deal are Paris, Lisbon and Copenhagen among 58 others. Your holiday hotspot is only revealed after booking.
Harriet Morphy-Morris and her partner decided to give the deal go thanks to the low price, booking via Wowcher by giving their desired travel dates, number of travellers and UK departure airport.
Although the package starts at £99, an additional £50 per person is charged for those flying from outside London, so although the couple originally looked at flying from Manchester, they ended up choosing London Stansted instead.
Harriet Morphy-Morris and her partner ended up spending more than expected when they bought a £99 holiday deal
After buying the trip, Wowcher emails a code to holiday makers, with instructions of how to claim their deal with partnered travel site Travelodeal.
Some 10 days after booking their vacation, Harriet received a phone call giving her the details of the trip, revealing that the couple would be going to Lake Garda in Italy – a destination they were pleased with.
She described sharing her personal details during the call, which came from an unknown number, as feeling a ‘bit strange’.
But she says she had been reassured that this was how the process worked, and that within 30 minutes, she had their boarding passes and the name of their hotel.
Harriet said that once given the details of the holiday, the ‘push to upgrade really started’.
While she tried to resist buying any extras, she ended up forking out an extra £30 per person to change their flight times.
As the original flights did not leave Stansted until 8pm, and the return flight left at 7am two nights later, this would have only given the couple one full day’s break.
So Harriet changed the flights so that they would leave earlier and return later, giving them two full days, and taking the price up to £129 each.
The couple were able to make the most of their trip after moving to a hotel closer to the destination (pictured: the lakeside town of Sirmione)
During the call, the adviser also suggested the couple change their hotel, which was described as ‘a little far out’.
But Harriet didn’t want to further push the budget, so stuck with the original hotel, within the fixed price.
She notes that travellers can book their own transfers, and don’t have to stick with Wowcher’s costly transport upgrades, which would have cost €80 each, each way, from Milan Bergamo airport down to Lake Garda.
Instead, the couple found their own train tickets, which cost €15 each for the 1hr 45min journey.
However, the real issues started when it came to getting from the hotel to Lake Garda, which, according to Google maps, was a 14-18 minute drive away. Their hotel, it turned out, was in Affi – quite some distance from the lake area.
Because the couple were visiting during the off-season, there were no buses or trains running from their hotel was to the lake, and so they would have to travel by taxi.
This would have cost €40 to €45 each way to and from the hotel to Pescheira, the closest lakeside town – a total of €160 over the two days.
According to Harriet (pictured), the original hotel (pictured) was nowhere near Lake Garda, and travel would have been extremely expensive
On top of this, their hotel was on the side of a motorway, and didn’t offer any amenities like restaurants or shops.
After working this out, Harriet and her partner decided to move to another hotel closer to Lake Garda. They ended up checking out of their hotel in under an hour.
Harriet said: ‘To us, it was a ridiculous amount to spend just on travel to and from and I was annoyed the location was so far from our ‘surprise destination.
‘So, we checked out after an hour and booked a city centre hotel in Pescheira for €85 for the two nights – just over half of the taxi cost.’
After trying to stick as closely to the £99 each budget, Harriet and her partner spent around £230 each. This included flights, accommodation, transfers, sightseeing, and food.
MailOnline has contacted Wowcher for comment.
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