Surrey Homes | SH46 | August 2018 | Wedding supplement inside

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Dorking Travel
Alistair McLean, owner
Moonstruck
SILENT POOL DISTILLERY
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04.11.2016
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We’re all online travel experts now, but for a trip as special as your honeymoon it pays
to have the experts sort it (and who needs the stress with a wedding to plan?)
Baldwins
Steph Witchell, Bespoke Travel Manager, Tunbridge Wells
“A honeymoon should be the most memorable holiday
you ever take – so don’t try to cut corners. Look at what is
available online, but then come and speak to an expert on
how to put it all together.
Booking on the internet is fraught with pitfalls. If you
book the flight and the accommodation separately and one
falls through you’ve lost the other. An experienced travel
agent will take away the stress from the bride and groom,
with a personal touch.
The style of honeymoons is changing. Couples are
looking for experiences rather than fly and flop. They’ve
done that before and want to have experiences – or go
somewhere you can combine experiences and activities, and
then flop for four or five days. People say: ‘We want to do
all these things while we can, because the next step in our
journey will be children and we won’t be able to afford it.’
We are doing a lot of safaris for honeymoons and I’ve
even done road trips in America, Route 66. A wonderful
option is Gaia Island resort off the coast of Borneo, which
has rooms on stilts on a beautiful beach with rainforest
behind. You can kayak through mangrove forest, go
ziplining, snorkelling with the experts in conservation and
see orangutans.
But on the other hand, while honeymooners’ initial
thoughts are the further away the more exotic it’s going to
be, do you really want to spend 20 hours on a plane to the
Cook Islands? Or would you just like to go to Positano…?”
dorkingtravel.co.uk 01306 735757
“The first thing we do when a couple comes in to enquire
about a honeymoon is to sit and have a chat about what
they are thinking they might want to do. Then we can
elaborate on that and make suggestions they haven’t even
thought of. It’s about talking to people, listening to their
ideas and then telling them the options.
We work with so many different operators and have such
depth of experience across our branches, we can arrange
anything anyone wants to do. We might suggest that they
twin centre it, rather than just going to one place. Luxury
train trips are huge this year. Not just the Orient Express
to Venice, they also do trips in Peru and Malaysia, with
stunning suites on the trains.
A lot of newlyweds now are doing a luxury ‘mini moon’
short break right after the wedding and then saving up to
do a proper honeymoon a year later.
After a big swing to the internet, people are coming back
to travel agents. There are so many dodgy companies online
and we offer price parity with what you find there, but we’ll
do everything for you and because of the contacts we have
we can get room upgrades and added extras.
Many of our clients have got their home already, so they
start a Honeymoon Fund with us and ask for contributions
to a honeymoon as a wedding present. They have cards they
give to wedding guests with our contact details and guests
ring in to us to make a contribution.
When couples come in to pick up their tickets they get a
bottle of prosecco and a wedding card – and we ask them
to pop in and have a coffee with us when they come back
and they show us their holiday pics. It helps us learn if
it’s somewhere we haven’t been ourselves and it’s great to
get feedback on hotels and trips, then we know what to
recommend to other people.”
baldwinstravel.co.uk 01892 506401
WT Wedding Supplement
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