Until recently I didn’t realise that you could book a holiday with British Airways, I had always assumed that they just provide the flight but I was wrong, they can help find you the perfect holiday where they carefully select hotels or villa’s, offer car hire and can even organise trips before you go so there’s no surprise extras where there shouldn’t be.
Holiday’s are a huge expense when you have a family and BA can secure your holiday with a low deposit and stagger your payments which is a real selling point to us as a family who often cannot afford a big outlay in one go, plus they are really price competitive. You can also enrol all of your family members in the Executive Club for free, so you can all collect Avios together in a Household Account which will give you more to spend on rewards when you want them.
Of course where BA really shine is their customer service. They have a 24 hour helpline is there just in case you need it before, during and after your holiday and then there is the actual travel.
We travelled with BA from Terminal 5 at Heathrow to Bodrum, Turkey back in May and they went out of their way to ensure that the experience was as straight-forward and stress free as possible. They even have hints and tips on travelling with family on their website.
Check-in with the family was a breeze as the staff were friendly and efficient, ensuring we were all seated together and once we had got through passport control we were free to relax and wait for our flight.
I hadn’t flown with the children before and understandably they were excited and nervous. Sebby was happy watching the planes take off and land through the windows but Isaac and Eliza amused themselves in the soft play before it was time to board.
When our flight was called, again it was a straight forward affair to board and we got to take the buggy right up to the door, where it was taken to put in the hold before making our way onto the plane. As the cabin crew welcomed us onto the plane it was clear that our holiday was going to be extra special as they spotted Isaac’s nerves and invited him to meet the pilot. They were only gone a minute or so but a relaxed and happy Isaac and Eliza came out complete with “future pilot” stickers.
The four hour flight with British Airways went past quickly as the time was broken up by food and drinks arriving plus every child is given a Skyflyers activity packs on board their flights, which keeps them amused during the flight. Apparently if you’re travelling with BA to a long haul destination, they also have a dedicated kid’s channel from Disney and the Cartoon Network. I loved the screens which showed which destination we were flying over though.
Disembarking the plane was as easy as boarding and the pilot even said goodbye to Eliza and Isaac as they walked past. We had our buggy in the hold and got that and our luggage back on the carousel in the airport within 20 minutes of landing and were soon on the coach transfer to our resort.
Booking a holiday with BA is super simple using their website. Simply choose your destination, preferred dates to fly and number of travellers and they come up with a list of available hotels and villa’s for you to choose from. There is clear pricing and you can click to compare up to three of your choices to make sure you get the perfect resort for you.
I have been looking into a holiday to Majorca for October half term and had been looking on the James Villa’s website as a villa is a cheaper option for a large family like ours. I then checked the BA website and was shocked by the difference in price for exactly the same property. James Villa’s – £478 per person including flights; BA – £224.17 per person including flights. Choosing a holiday using BA gives me a saving of £1525 – I wasn’t expecting that!
If you are planning a weekend city break they have some fabulous offers too for under £100.
I asked my fellow bloggers for their experienced of booking with BA too and thediaryofajewellerylover.co.uk said “They have really good deals for city breaks at certain times of the year, we went to Berlin and had a brilliant deal last December for the Christmas markets. Very price competitive.” All The Beautiful Things had an amazing 30th birthday trip to New York and found that BA was the cheapest option too.
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I never knew they did holidays, like you I just thought it was flights. Booking holidays as a package gives that extra bit of reassurance doesn’t it and especially with BA being such a widely known company. Will keep them in mind for our next holiday!
This is really good to know, as a family of 6 holidays abroad can be very expensive so I think we could definitely make savings with BA. We went abroad for the first time this Summer and the children loved the experience so we are hoping to go again.
I was really surprised at the difference – they will be my first port of call from now on
Funnily enough I’ve just been having a look at the BA website for New York as that’s somewhere I’d love to go and I was surprised at how reasonable their prices were x x
I’m not much of a traveller myself but this is good to know, I’ll tell my daughter as she’s the jetsetter in our home.
Sounds like BA are a great airline to fly with when you have kids with you. I must remember that for when we first take the kids abroad x
I always prefer to fly with BA rather than the budget airlines and often BA are actually cheaper, especially if you’re checking in luggage. I’ve never booked a whole holiday with BA though.
Oh wow I didn’t know you could book a holiday through BA, how handy! It sounds like you had a great trip 🙂 X
We traveled to New York with BA and booked the hotel etc with them too. It was a great trip and we have an ace time
We booked to go to Amsterdam with BA and did a whole package deal because it was cheaper than EasyJet by a fair amount x
Sounds like BA do go out of their way to help families, and it is reassuring that you were all kept sat together. I would be interested in a comparison with James Villas mind to make it fairer to see why the difference in price.
I travelled with BA when I went to the USA once, it was fantastic. Great savings – who knew!
Didn’t know you could book a full holiday with BA, I love the soft play area in the terminal. When we flew with Max he got so bored waiting in the airport so it’s good to see some companies looking after families!
We are just starting to go on more holidays and my partner and I went abroad for the first time this year. It’s always great to see new options, especially if they result in saving money. Thank you for this post. x
As the wife has said, we did a package with them for Amsterdam and I was surprised at how much cheaper it was than Easyjet!
I did not know British Airways did complete holidays.I will have to check them out for our next holiday.Thanks for the tip.
I did not know British Airways did complete holidays.I will have to check them out for our next holiday.Thanks for the tip.
This is really interesting – I had no idea that BA provided this service, let alone that you could stagger holidays. It’s really worthwhile for us to consider this as one of our options when we’re next booking a family holiday. We’ve actually never had a “proper” one and have been talking about looking into packages just to take the stress out of the whole thing.
That soft play at T5 is a really nice touch isn’t it? I love BA!!!
I didn’t know they did complete holidays! Sounds like a fantastic trip!
I only discovered very recently that you could book with them too! It’s certainly something to consider for my next holiday although I generally use Thomson x
This sounds like a wonderful stress free way to travel. I saw the list of packages available in your link above. What particular packages would you recommend?