Who am I? Pretty much your Joe average. I’m married to my beautiful wife Suzie (20years), have 2 kids Dylan (14) and Hayden (12) and have worked in retail pretty much all my life. I owner built our family home in Beaconsfield Victoria which was a massive challenge but enjoyed the whole experience. I like to dabble in building projects which led me to completing my certificate 4 in ‘Building and Construction’ (October ’13) and my plan is to obtain my building licence. Currently I run a juice bar in the city of Melbourne called Feeling Fruity. I have been doing this for the last 10 years and previously worked for the company before having the opportunity to purchase the Collins Place store. Check us out here. facebook.com/feelingfruitycollinsplace

I love to travel and we as a family have traveled to the US on 6 separate occasions. We go for 4-5 weeks at a time although our latest trip was 6 weeks. My thinking is that you pay a lot to fly and if you can be smart about how you spend your money, you can stretch out the length of time you go for. Suzie and I went for a one week holiday with our very good friends Donna and Andrew to Las Vegas in November ‘12 as well (No kids – Highly recommended). We have also had numerous holidays throughout Australia – as I said we love to travel, but it is expensive and takes a lot of planning. Even if you use a travel agent, there is still a lot of time you need to put into planning your holiday.  I’ve had a lot of experience when it comes to planning holidays. I usually plan the trip, purchase all the flights, accommodation, car hire sightseeing etc.  I rarely go to a travel agent and for good reason.

A short story…… I have had a couple of, let’s say, not great experiences when using a travel agent. For our last trip, I ended up going to the flight centre travel expo. I found a deal that I thought was worthwhile booking through the expo (The deal was pretty good). You don’t have a lot of time to make a decision though. If you don’t book there and then, you miss out so I decided to book. The first mistake I made was not getting the dates right. (Explained in timing your holiday). The second mistake I made was doing what the agent told me. She told me at the time that the names had to be exactly right (spelling). That’s not hard, I know my families names and how they are spelt so all good. I paid a deposit, gave all the details and booked a time to pay the remaining amount. I was asked to bring a copy of our passports which I dropped in a few days later. The travel agent I was dealing with was away on holidays when I dropped them in so I left a copy. The agent called me back a week or so later and told me that I had given her the incorrect passport details and it was going to cost me something like $150 to fix the names as the tickets had been organised. I was quite mad at the time. She knew I usually book my own trips as I had told her this at the time of booking and I said to her that if she had said the names had to be as per passport, I would have rang my wife at home and got the correct names. I’d already rang her a couple of times when I was with the agent for other things so it would have been no issue to call again. In the end, I no longer wanted any contact with the agent and went directly to the airline. I actually drove out to Melbourne airport with passports in hand. They told me I wouldn’t have a problem with the names the way they were. You can make your own mind up on what this particular agent was trying to do? My advice would be to do all the research and know exactly what you want and what you need to do before booking any ‘Expo’ deal or any flights in general in fact, research is a must before booking anything to do with a holiday. As I mentioned, you don’t have a lot of time to really make an informed decision so planning before you go to an expo or even a travel agent is really important. Share your story good or bad below.

This is why I decided to put this website together. I’m not an agent and don’t pretend to be. What I am is someone who spends many hours researching and planning our family holidays. Fortunately for me, my business allows me to be able to spend the time I need to research. Most people don’t have that luxury, and this site will hopefully give you enough insite and confidence to plan a fantastic holiday and save you both time and more importantly money!