Most big holiday companies now offer some sort of free kids place offer, and while they can seem similar on the surface, there are differences between them.
easyJet’s Free Child Places deal is one such offer, and apart from being a great deal for families looking to save money on their holidays, it has a few interesting quirks to be aware of before you book.
The free places are available on thousands of holidays with easyJet, and they are all ATOL protected, but this is not unique among holiday providers.
What makes easyJet interesting, aside from a huge range of package holidays available with free child places, is their flexibility. They also have a few terms you should know about before you pack your suitcase.
How It Works
It’s a simple enough offer: with selected hotels and destinations, you can get one free child’s place for every two paying adults.
That means a free flight, free accommodation (so long as the child is sharing a room with the parents), free transfers, free 23kg luggage allowance, and even free food and drink if the booked holiday is all inclusive (hotel dependent). Nice, right?
Wherever you see the Free Child Place label on one of their holidays, the offer applies:
The even better news is that this offer applies even if you are also travelling with an infant. Infants (under 2 years old) travel for a nominal £25 fee with easyJet provided they sit on an adult’s lap, and the hotels don’t charge extra for them either. You can even put two items like a pushchair and a travel cot in the hold for free.
The holidays you can choose from are wide ranging too. Just some of the destinations include:
- Spain
- Portugal
- Cyprus
- The Greek Islands
- Turkey
- Egypt
- Malta
- Italy
…and more besides. So whether you go somewhere near or somewhere far, for a few days or up to two weeks, the Free Child Places deal is a possibility.
This isn’t available to single parents, but a single adult travelling with a child can claim up to a £100 discount offer.
Great For Short Family Breaks
In order to qualify for the Free Child Places offer, your holiday only needs to be 3 or more nights long. This means you can get away for a long weekend running into a bank holiday, for example, and still take advantage of the deal.
It works just as well for longer holidays too of course, but this sort of flexibility is really useful, especially for families juggling tight budgets with work commitments and school term times.
For young families it is even better, because thanks to the way easyJet treat infants, two adults could travel with two children (one under 2 and one under 15) without paying more than £25 for either of them.
The filtering options on the site even let you search for holidays based on flight duration, so you can choose a holiday that gives you more time relaxing or having fun and less time in the air – which means less chance of your kids going mad and screaming on the plane!
Flexibility
easyJet are keen to point out how flexible their holiday packages are, including those that qualify for the free children’s places.
For a start, so long as the balance is settled 28 days before the holiday, you can spread payments out in a way that suits you. A £60 deposit per person is all it takes to secure your booking, and after that, you can pay in instalments to a timeframe that works for you.
You can even change the details of your holiday – or the entire thing – up to 28 days before departure. Sometimes there is not even a fee for this, and where there is a fee, it is often as low as £25.
If the worst happened and you had to cancel the whole thing, they have a Refund Guarantee. If you cancel up to 60 days beforehand your deposit will be refunded as credit, but any instalments you have paid will be refunded in full. Cancellation up to 28 days before will see you lose the deposit, but you still get the rest back.
Plus, they promise to match the price if you find the same holiday cheaper elsewhere, too. It’s called their Best Price Guarantee.
easyJet have won a lot of awards for this sort of thing, and the Gods of parenting do enjoy throwing a spanner in the works don’t they? So this sort of flexibility is very useful indeed!
Things to Look Out For
The easyJet Free Child Places offer is created in conjunction with the hotels themselves. So easyJet is giving away the free travel, and the hotel is giving away the free accommodation. This means that each hotel has a say in the specific rules.
One of these is the upper age limit that your free child can be. This is something you need to check, because while the maximum upper age limit is 15, some have lower age limits.
easyJet themselves treat anyone 16+ as an adult.
Connected to this, children must still be under any applicable age limit on the return flight of the journey. So trying to sneak a 15 year old through if they turn 16 while you are away will not work. This also applies to infants: if your toddler turns 2 while you are away they are not classed as an infant.
You should also be aware that availability is limited. The free child places can run out, and may only be available for specific rooms in some hotels, or on certain dates. It depends on the hotel you are looking at, so check everything carefully.
The last thing to look out for is any extras. A lot is included for free, but optional extras such as picking specific seats on the plane (this is easyJet after all), upgrades, and sometimes entry to certain onsite attractions may cost extra.