OK - so I know this is a bit vague, but still hoping for help. I live in the US so I'm not familiar with the British tour companies. However, I will be visiting my Mum in England in the Spring and we would like to do a short (probably 5 night) trip somewhere - probably Tuscany or the Amalfi coast. Looking for some good websites to use for British companies - low budget. You may be thinking it would be easier for my Mum to do this since she lives in England, but she doesn't have a computer. Oh - we would want to fly out of either Liverpool or Manchester. I would also be open to other suggestions - possibly one of the Greek islands. Looking for something pretty laid back - somewhere where we can take walks, absorb the local atmosphere and culture - not really looking for nightlife or cities.
Thanks!

The budget airlines often offer holiday packages. There are quite a few - Monarch, BMIbaby, Easyjet and Ryanair as well as others. If you check on this website it will tell you who flies out of Liverpool and Manchester to areas you are interested in:
http://www.whichbudget.com/

There would be tour companies as well but we travel independently so cannot recommend anyone. You could also book flights only, then check on www.tripadvisor.com for hotel reviews and book a hotel separately.

As an example, Easyjet fly from Liverpool to Rhodes, so you could book a hotel in the Old Town or nearby beach area, then do day trips by local bus.

Kay

Good info from KayF.
I used to book with Thompson or Thomas Cook but now fly out of London with Easyjet or Ryanair. When I decide where I want to go I check Booking.com or Venere.com for hotels.

If you want a ready-made, good old fashioned British package holiday, first forget about who's good and who's bad. As long as the operator is an ABTA member, your money's safe: judging the quality is up to you.

There's a finite number of destinations you can easily get to for x days on y date from Liverpool or Manchester and your 5-night trquirement might rule most packages out: www.travelsupermarket.com and www.sunshine.co.uk/holidays both list just about all of them. Thomson Holidays, First Choice, Thomas Cook/Co-operative (now in the process of merging) are worth looking at, but the comparison websites show most of their range anyway.

If you want a semi-independent operation (probably the better choice for a shortish trip), both lastminute.com and latebookers offer combined bookings for hotels and flights. Obviously, the airlines also do this, and it might be worth spending a few minutes on the two airports' websites to see where you can actually fly to when you want to travel.

Naples, for example, only gets flights from either airport in the summer, so unless you want to faff about with connections, Amalfi might not be your best choice.

Thanks - for some reason I'm having trouble figuring out where I can fly to from Liverpool or Manchester at that time of year. Can anybody help?

Hi, if you look on the website I gave, WhichBudget, key in Liverpool in the 'From' box. It automatically puts 'Anywhere' in so hit Search, then select your country from the list. Once you click on the country, it gives you a list of airports and the airline that flies there.

The budget airlines tend to only fly to certain destinations according to what they think demand is, eg, ski destinations like Geneva only in winter and beach destinations, like Mykonos, only in summer. You would have to go into the timetable section on the various airline websites to check if they fly on the date or month you are looking at.

This website doesn't show all the airlines, for the major airlines like British Airways you can check directly on their website. Sometimes they work out not much dearer, due to all the add-on costs the budget carriers tack on to the initial flight cost (luggage, cost of checking in etc).

Hope that helps. (Obviously then start over with Manchester as your 'From' airport.)

Kay

worth visiting the web sites for Manchester and Liverpool (john Lennon) airports. Both have a good guide as to what is available