Tag Archives: Tips

News

Finding Budget and Affordable Travel Deals

Finding reasonable budget travel is not always easy! Affordable accommodations and ways to travel often leave you trying to find last minute vacation deals or booking over a year in advance (which is not always possible when vacation dates may change). It is also hard to travel during the peak summer getaway season when everyone is looking for an affordable vacation. The good news is that budget travel does not need to be that hard to find anytime of the year! Here are a few helpful tips to finding budget and affordable travel deals for transportation and accommodations in popular travel destinations all year round.

The place many people begin their search for affordable travel deals is online. Travel websites like FareCompare and Travelocity are definitely helpful and allow you to be flexible while searching for airfares, car rentals, and hotel accommodations; but they can’t always find the best budget travel deals. This is because their databases often do not search many of the discount airlines or local vacation rentals that offer the best prices to vacationers.

Visiting budget airlines’ websites directly and comparing the cost of their flights to the flights you find on large airfare search sites is definitely one way to make sure you are getting the best affordable travel deals. It is also very time consuming and by the time you finish comparing flights, the price you wanted could have long flown away! The problem is only compounded when you then have to find and book hotel or vacation rental accommodations and ground transportation for sightseeing and tours at the best price during your stay. If you factor in the cost of your time and energy that you have spent planning your vacation, along with flights, tours and accommodations, now you are getting expensive.

There is a way around the hassle of piecing together affordable travel: you can contact a professional travel consultant or tour operator whose job is to find the best deals and combine them into package offers! A traveler might expect the cost of a travel consultant to add to the cost of a vacation, but tour operators have several advantages to offering the best budget travel deals. In many cases, tour operators have long term relationships with cruise lines, airlines, tour guides, motor coach companies, hotels, and resorts. These relationships were built over time and allow tour operators to get the best prices from their travel associates and pass the savings on. Another key budget friendly fact about tour operators is that they have buying power! Since group travel dealers buy in bulk, the savings they receive can be passed on to you, just like other wholesale sellers.

If you are looking for affordable travel deals, make sure to sign up for tour operators’ newsletters and deal alerts so that you do not miss vacation packages to destinations you want to travel to. Tour operators work yearly to create escorted vacations that showcase every season and are the easiest way to find budget and affordable travel deals.

 

News

Finding Travel Deals

If your vacation time is coming up and you are planning on making a trip, then you will need to make some plans. Perhaps you are going to visit family? Or, maybe you plan to take your family to see an attraction somewhere? Maybe you are going to visit another country? Regardless of where you plan to go, you can find great deals on getting there, staying there, and even enjoying your time at the location.

Often times we want to take our children to see the things we saw when we were younger. It would be nice to see some new destinations as well. Either way, we want to do a lot but don’t always have the funds. So, we are always in search for a deal. There are many out there to be had. Here are some quick ideas.

Saving on airfare is all about shopping around. Compare the different offers each company has. Can you fly in mid week and avoid weekend charges and busy times? Flying at night or at odd times can also increase your changes of getting a deal.

Once you get to your destination, you’ll need a place to stay and a car to drive. The best way to get deals on these is to plan ahead. Making reservations ahead of time can be the best way to lower your cost. Cutting out extra charges on things you don’t need, or won’t use, also helps. No need for that car to come with a DVD player if you only plan to drive short distances. Along the same lines, you probably won’t have time to watch all those movies on cable either. Eliminating these extras can lead to extra cash in your pocket.

Saving money on travel doesn’t need to stop there. You can save money on travel in just about every aspect by planning and research. Take the time to compare different companies, then choose the best option for you. Also, take a box of cereal and pick up a gallon of milk instead of spending a ton on breakfast. Grab a local newspaper to see if there are deals in there for area restaurants. The local family diner may have some great food at reasonable prices but is overlooked because of all those glaring signs in tourist’s face.

Being able to find a deal on travel is a great advantage. Saving some extra cash can truly make your vacation more worthwhile. Since so many people just don’t get enough vacation time, getting the most out of what they do get is key. So, take some time and find the best travel deals out there for yourself!

 

Tips

Snooker Cue Tips, The Bit on the End of the Cue

Snooker cue tips come in many different guises, depending on the type of cue you have, from a simple plastic tip for the really cheap cues that come with the cheap folding tables to the screw in tips that are so convenient that are the next step up in tip design, to the glue on tips that the pros use but are a pain to replace. The plastic tipped cues are just toys and are definitely not for the serious player and are near impossible to get chalk on for playing the game properly. The screw in tips are very much better and can be chalked just like a regular cue and have the added benefit of being very easy to replace. Just make sure the tip is securely screwed in place before you take a shot, or the results could be embarrassing!

The best snooker cue tips though are the glue on ones that the pros use. They are made from animal hide from leather to elk hide depending on the manufacturer. These are the best and choose the type you are most comfortable with. Both these types of tip hold the chalk well and give good control for the side and backspin shots.

A more recent development in the snooker tip world is layered tips, typically made from pigskin and as the name suggests the tip is made up of layers of pigskin. One of the advertised benefits is that you can choose the hardness level of the tips from soft to hard and they are supposed to last longer and be more consistent in their response when striking the cue ball. I haven’t tried them myself but they could be worth a go.

The drawback to glue on tips is replacing them, it is a bit of a chore, but quite simple;  you just need a Stanley knife and a tip shaping file or some sandpaper. Basically, cut off the old tip with the Stanley knife back to the ferrule and then rough up the top of the shaft with some sandpaper to give a good surface for the glue. Then use some superglue gel which is best, and apply the glue to the top of the shaft, spread it out to cover all the surface and then place the cue tip onto the top of the shaft. The tip should overhang the cue by a mm or so all the way round. You can then use the knife to trim the tip to the same diameter of the cue (or leave it, depending on your preference) and finish off to a good shape with the sandpaper. Leave for 10 minutes for the glue to cure and you are ready to go. Ronnie O’Sullivan famously changed his tip several times in the same day when playing a tournament, as he was unhappy with his play, so the tip was blamed for his poor performance and he lost.