Fancy Corfu for £22 a day? The bargain early summer holiday offers as travel firms slash prices
Exclusive: Travel firms are cutting prices drastically to fill seats and beds over the next two weeks
ValVades
Package holiday prices for Greek islands in May have fallen to just £22 a day – below £1 per hour. Tui is selling a one-week trip to Corfu for £156 on Friday 16 May. The Greek island package, based on two sharing, includes flights from London Gatwick (with baggage), transfers and accommodation with breakfast at the family-run Hotel Theo. A Blue Flag beach is a 15-minute walk away.
It is one of many excellent deals for travellers between the May bank holidays in the UK. But just one week later – on 23 May – the price increases almost five-fold to £747 because of the late May half-term.
Many of the bargains are to the eastern Mediterranean.
Jet2 Holidays is selling one-week packages from Luton to Icmeler on the Turkish Riviera for only £196, self-catering, on Thursday 8 May. An all-inclusive deal to the Club Alize in Marmaris is available on the same day for £362 – barely £50 a day for flights, accommodation and all the holidaymaker can eat and drink.
The best easyJet Holidays offer from Bristol to Marmaris on Wednesday 14 May is £244, staying at the three-star Grand Villa Sol.
Tui, Europe's biggest holiday company, has sub-£200 deals to other destinations, including from Gatwick to the Greek islands of Kefalonia on 8 May and Thassos on 11 May. Thassos is highly recommended by The Independent and includes a half-hour ferry crossing on the journey from Kavala airport. Tui says the average daily high in May is 25C.
For other countries and departures from other UK airports, Jet2 Holidays has a wide range of offers.
On Thursday 15 May, the company is offering a week in San Antonio in Ibiza for £214, including flights from Bournemouth. The price from East Midlands is £228.
Flight-only bargains are also widely available. Booking just one day ahead from Manchester to Genoa – hub for the Italian Riviera – for Wednesday 7 May costs just £42 return on Ryanair, with minimum baggage and no seat selection.
North Africa from Scotland is also implausibly cheap. On 14 May, easyJet has a fare of only £62 return from Edinburgh to Agadir in Morocco, again with limited cabin baggage – though the airline seeks to seat passengers together even if they choose not to pay.
Ryanair and easyJet are competing on the route from the Scottish capital to the Atlantic resort in the southwest of the kingdom. The return journey covers 3,600 miles. Jet2 has also launched a big programme of flights to Morocco.
As Global Airlines prepares to fly for the first time from Glasgow to New York JFK, out on 15 May and back on 19 May, its fare of £778 is more than twice the cheapest nonstop deal on the same dates from Manchester to Manhattan on Virgin Atlantic – currently £368 return.
From London, British Airways has a fare of £402 return on the same dates.
