My top travel & packing tips

If you haven’t heard me banging on about it over on my Twitter or Instagram by now (sorry not sorry), I’m going to America in a couple of weeks so I thought it was the perfect excuse to write a travel-related post! When ever I book a trip I always find myself obsessing over anything travel related; tips, tricks and all that good stuff that helps make life that little bit easier, so I thought I’d share a few which I’ve used or will be using for my holiday.

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I’m always finding ways to save on space in my luggage. I do everything from the rolling up of the clothes trick, to using little plastic tubs and bottles for my liquids, but when I found out this little airport trick my mind was blown. I discovered (via Twitter) that you could actually make an online Boots order to click and collect at the store after security; meaning, you could order all the liquids that you couldn’t fit in your 100ml allowance and it wouldn’t count towards it. This is especially handy for bigger products such as suncream, shampoo, hairspray etc. I tried it last time I went away in October and it worked - I was amazed! I feel like I’ll never pay for luggage again knowing this now.
Top tip: Place your order at least a week in advance to make sure it’s going to arrive in time 

When it comes to bringing my beauty products away, as you can imagine as a beauty lover I have a lot to take. When it comes to foundations, my top tip is to go to your local store and get a sample pot or 2 of your favourite foundations - I know it’s not really meant for that but the little bottles are so useful for travelling. I don’t know about you but I don’t like the thought of taking multiple foundation bottles away and worrying about them breaking or exploding in the checked luggage, plus, it’s not as if you need a whole bottle of foundation for a holiday anyway. This trick gives me piece of mind knowing they’re right next to me in overhead luggage (in my clear plastic bag of course) and not being bashed around somewhere.

Now onto a bit of money saving! I’m not sure if other websites do this the same as I’ve only had experience with the one, but if you book your hotel through Agoda, they offer a ‘best price guarantee’ which means if you find that the price has gone down after booking, they will honour you the difference and give you a refund. The only catch is that you have to find all the evidence yourself, take screenshots of the new price you’ve found, and you have to make sure it’s the same hotel, same dates, same room and same conditions e.g no cancellation, breakfast included. You can do this even if you’ve found the price on Agoda, it doesn’t have to be a different website. I recently got a £72(!!) refund on one of the hotels I’d booked in Hollywood as the price had dropped around 2 weeks after I’d booked it. You can find the claim form here to see what information you need.
Top tip: use Trivago to check on your hotel price regularly as this shows hidden deals which some websites may not show you.

I know that other hotel websites offer a best price guarantee such as Booking.com and hotels.com but I haven’t personally used them to be able to give advice on it. I do however make use of Booking.com ‘s Genius account - I’m a ‘level 2 genius’ so I get a 15% discount on selected rooms and some offer free breakfast as well. If you aren’t sure what this is, it’s a kind of loyalty program that they do so if you book through them a certain number of times, your ‘genius’ ranking and benefits will increase. I mainly find booking.com room rates to be cheaper than anywhere else because of this and rarely book elsewhere - but if you do, make sure to keep an eye on the price after you’ve booked to claim some money back!

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And those are my favourite tips & tricks to use whenever I go away - hopefully you’ve learnt something new today here and you’ll use one of them for your future travels too!

*Items pictured were kindly gifted by Nivea



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