Booking a holiday

Listen to the phone conversation between the travel agent and a customer and do the different tasks (follow the instructions).

Arranging a trip

Booking Holidays Online

Listen to the podcast and take notes. Then listen and read the script. 
Stephen and Alice talk about booking holidays online and the language used in advertising holidays on the internet.

The travel ads that are too good to be true

All too often fantastic sounding advertisements for deals on flights, hotels and holidays turn out to be misleading. It's an increasingly common complaint from travel consumers around the world.

Watch the video up to 3’12” and fill in the gaps. Answers in ‘comments’.

1.    According to the video, the travel industry fantastic sounding ads usually turn out to be ____________  ____________.

2.    Stephen Duck says that sometimes you see a great offer and when you start trying to book it, you see that is no longer ____________ or you have to ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________.

He also says that after making the emotional commitment there’s nothing worse than having to decide to either ____________ ____________ or ____________ ____________ ____________ than you anticipated.

3.    Frank Brehany speaks about a family who had booked their hotel about ____________  ____________  ____________ only to discover about ____________ ____________ ____________ that they can’t go to this hotel because it ____________ ____________ in ____________.

4.    Prof. Ang Peng Hwa speaks about a common practice in Asia which is called “the bate and switch”. People sign up for a holiday package and finally if there aren’t enough people they are ____________ to ____________  ____________ .

5.    Travel Zoo is a website that has ____________ ____________ around the world. They went through newspapers, magazines and online looking at  ____________ ____________. They say that ____________ of them didn’t pass their criteria: they were not ____________, the price was different, there were ____________  ____________ .

6.    Some airlines and tour operators had been forced to withdraw certain adverts. The rivalry between budget airlines has taken the form of objecting to each other marketing.

A newspaper ad showing a woman in ____________  ____________  sipping a cocktail and proclaiming ” ____________  ____________  ____________  ____________  now” was found to be misleading because the maximum temperatures in the ____________ ____________ ____________ on offer were between ____________ and ____________ degrees during the promotional period.

A trip to London

You will hear a man talking about a trip to London that he has just returned from. 

The best place

1. Listen to Sophie talking about the best place she's been to. Have a look at the vocabulary and then listen and fill in the gaps.
2. You are going to hear four stories about vacations. Answer these multiple choice questions about the recording. There are TWO questions for each story, eight in total.
3. Here you have twelve listening activities related to tourism.

Planning a vacation

Watch this video and learn how to plan a vacation and use the Present Perfect to talk about experiences (American English).

Ten things you didn't know about Valentine's Day

Click here to learn some things about this date. There's also a video.