Late booking bargain holidays

To further expand on the strategy above for using both online travel sites and local high street tour operators and conventional travel agents - remember to also do other research online, dont go off to the travel agent armed with vague ideas of where you want to go, the accommodation, fkights etc. What you need to do is plan your holiday to the last detail, the flights, airport, hotel/accommodation, everything - then find best deals for these exact details online whether as part of a package or each part of the holiday individually - now you are in a position to approach the high street agents with a real bargaining tool, ie here are the prices I have been quoted and if you beat them i will book with you - if they beat your price then pop along to next nearest travel agent and tell them about the last offer and again ask them to beat that and so on. If you play this right you should end up back at original travel agent with at least 2 better deals on offer and then ask them to beat this new price!!! Obviously there is a limit to this so dont keep going around the agents all day trying to reduce prices! What you should find is that the agents will beat online website prices with a bit of persistance and then will compete against each other for the business- it has worked for me every time.