Thinking of Christmas travels?

Christmas travels – You don’t have to travel to far-flung shores to enjoy Christmas Day – you can also enjoy some great travel deals closer to home.

For example, Groupon is offering a cracking deal that includes several European cities with flights and hotels from just £119 per person over the holiday period.

Among the destinations is a two night break in Amsterdam with return flights from Bristol with the flights departing on Christmas Eve.

Alternatively, travellers could head to Berlin and enjoy the city’s famous Christmas markets with flights leaving London for a two night break. This trip will cost from £159.

Barcelona also makes the list with return flights from London and the two night break costs from £199 per person with the flights leaving on December 23.

A trip to Paris on over New Year’s Eve

For those who want a more romantic break, there’s a trip to Paris on over New Year’s Eve from £279 per person.

The Groupon deal also includes trips to Rome, Prague, Budapest, Reykjavik and Venice.

It’s important to appreciate that Christmas Day trips tend to be cheaper than those for New Year’s Eve packages so you may need to shop around and play with the dates and locations to find the best deals and offers.

However, it may help for those wondering how they can get the time off for a nice trip away for Christmas should appreciate that they can get 11 days off by booking just four days annual leave with their employer.

This may be late notice for a simple trick because fellow workers may already have put their annual leave requests in to enjoy this.

Choosing the right days for Christmas travels

Essentially, by choosing the right days for Christmas travels, you can spend more time with family or friends or do something you’d prefer to be doing instead.

It’s relatively straightforward to understand since Christmas Eve falls on a Monday, which is a working day for many of us.

This means it’s sandwiched between two bank holidays, Tuesday’s Christmas Day and Boxing Day, plus two weekends.

With the Thursday and Friday being working days, plus New Year’s Eve on Monday being another work day for most, this is an opportunity to strike.

New Year’s Day is a Bank Holiday but by using four days’ annual leave you can extend the holiday period easily.

You simply need to book Christmas Eve, Thursday 27 December, plus Friday 28 December and New Year’s Eve.

That means you can finish work on Friday 21 December and have 11 days of holiday to enjoy.

Using another three annual leave days

However, what many may not realise is by using another three annual leave days by booking Wednesday 2 January to the following Friday, you can extend this break to 16 days and not have to return to work until Monday 7 January.

Now that’s a Christmas holiday worth taking!