New Booking System for Overseas Travel

I can't believe how bad it is!

I wanted to research the Plymouth/Roscoff crossing for my daughter to take the caravan over, she would come back without it and we would go over without and come back with it after our holiday. Very flexible on dates other than she has to be August so I was just looking for the cheapest crossings as we can't take advantage of the site vouchers as the crossings have to be booked separately as the caravan is only going one way.

It took me the whole of an afternoon. The old system would have taken me half an hour at the most.

I can't believe how bad it is!

I agree, I was wondering if all the comments were just hype but I thought I would give it a go.  In the old system you could look a a crossing (Dover/Calais in my case) and get a general idea of prices from the different operators around given times, you could then opt to choose more crossing from this operator to give more options for each.  To do that now you have to go back and put in the different criteria all over again such as later/earlier times, what was wrong with the old easy site.

I also noticed C&MC round up the figures to the nearest £££ for some crossings, doing the same search on C&CC it gives a £amount then X pence, C&MC is just the £ amount rounded up to the next highest.... 

C&MC also offer a combined deal on certain crossings/operators (P&O) so trying to add site vouchers like others have said is near impossible... and then the cost just rockets so not a bargain at least on the shorter crossing.

Hi lagerorwine

Thanks for your feedback. 

Our Travel service is only available to members to book so whilst anyone can search and see the prices, you do need to log in as a member to make the actual booking.

Best Wishes

Tracy

Hi eurotraveller & MikeyA,

Brittany Ferries are indeed running a 15% discount offer at the moment but the prices on our website should include this discount so that we will still be the same price or cheaper than going direct to Brittany.  We have combined deals on both French and Spanish routes which may be cheaper than the direct fares or the best deals are available on these French sailings

Portsmouth-Caen 14:45 and Caen-Portsmouth 08:30 all year

Poole-Cherbourg 08:30 and Cherbourg-Poole 18:30/18:15 all year

Plymouth-Roscoff all departures excluding Friday and Saturday and excluding high season and Roscoff-Plymouth all departures excluding high season

St Malo- Portsmouth 10:30 Monday to Friday all year     

Le Havre-Portsmouth 17:00 Sunday to Wednesday all year

Hopefully this helps.

Kind Regards

Tracy

This new system ain’t great keeps freezing and then goes to a page you  don’t want so you have to start a new search. It’s not a quick system to use.

Hi everyone,

Just to let you know we have had a website release with two changes to the overseas booking system. 

1)  Purchasing Overseas Site Night Vouchers is now prominently displayed on the first page of the site search (see photo)    

2)  The purchase of `Combined Deals`, i.e. ferry + campsite bookings, which can be great value, is now smoother and a lot more informative for members.   

We hope this helps your online booking experience with the Club and thank you all for your feedback. 

Rowena

Well at least it now works. However adding the vouchers to the ferry gives very little discount or no discount whatsoever.

Poole/Cherbourg and return for my dates is £174.25 to buy on it's own. When adding 4 vouchers at £87.80 the total in my basket £262.05. No discount at all.

You might as well just book the ferry at the offered price of £174.25 and use ACSI prices of an average of £15.50 per night a saving of £6.45 A saving to me personally of over £260

You are right harryb. I went around that scenario several times in early January, before finally opting for our usual Ports - Caen crossing. It suggests there is a cheaper combined deal, as the ferry price is lower, but then offers no reduction, whereas Ports - Caen drops the combined price

Rowena, I have already booked, but thought that I would check if the 'mods' put in place have improved the experience - 

Yes it has, its a lot better and close to the old system in my opinion.

1. You don't have to click on the cars dimensions twice to get the system to accept them

2. You get comparative crossing.

Although, the site vouchers is more prominent, after adding them and it changing to the screen giving details of how the vouchers work, its easy to fail to spot the button at the bottom for actually choosing how many, and adding them - that button ought to be nearer the top and visible immediately it changes page I think.

Mike

Yes, it is much better now, thank goodness.  The site night vouchers option is much more prominent as you say, however, on the booking info on the right hand side of that screen, it still tells you to click on any site on the map to get the vouchers; perhaps that could be re-phrased.

I agree with Mike above that the button for choosing how many vouchers are required should be at the top; on my tablet it's nowhere to be seen, and I had to scroll way down to get to it.  That's because I knew where to find it, others who don't know could have a problem finding it.