It was only a matter of time before travel companies started to surcharge for currency fluctuations. ABTA has given 15 companies permission to make surcharges providing that they reserved the right to do so in their booking conditions, and absorbed an amount equal to 2% of the holiday cost.

What does this mean to you?

From what I have read so far, the travel company can charge you up to an extra 10% of your holiday cost, so on a holiday costing you £2,000 you would be expected to pay up to £200 more. This surcharge is not fair and as usual families will be the worst hit.

You may have already heard that British Airways have recently increased their fuel surcharge, and I am convinced that as the price of oil increases, other airlines will follow. Surely the government and banks are at fault for the financial slowdown and credit crunch which is putting pressure on the travel companies to recoup their losses.

Tune into BBC Radio 4 tomorrow at 12.45 pm to hear my first radio interview on the surcharges.

The 15 companies who have had their application agreed by ABTA can be found in the comments and I’m convinced others will follow. I’m reliably informed that package holiday operators, Thomas Cook and TUI, have pledged not to have surcharges this summer – but don’t bet your house on that.

If you have been a victim or have your own opinion on the holiday surcharge please leave your comments.

For the past few months I have been promoting my favourite travel videos submitted to me from readers and I am looking for new submissions. Simply upload your holiday video to the likes of You Tube or Travelistic and contact me with the link to your video and I will choose my favourites.

Your travel video will be showcased for 7 days, and then archived on the video map so that visitors can scroll around the map and watch videos at their leisure. As usual, if you have any questions please leave them in the comments section.

Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I was surprised to learn that apparently, when you use a hotel booking site they are not responsible if there is a issue with the booking. I find that worrying because I have used this type of site before and I could have been left stranded.

What if the hotel haven’t received my booking and we’ve all heard of hotels overbooking. The last thing I would want to do is be wandering around a unfamiliar city trying to find somewhere to stay, especially when I have already paid for my hotel room.

It seems from reading various terms and conditions that the hotel booking agent basically wants to wash their hands as soon as you’ve paid for the room. The point of a short break is that you can unwind, not get stressed at the thought that you don’t have a hotel room on arrival.

Read part of the terms and conditions of hotel booking site, Late Rooms.

“Late Rooms is a booking agent for the hotels and other service providers advertised on the Site. Your contract for the room and/or other services advertised on the Site that you wish to book or purchase will be with the applicable hotel or service provider and not with Late Rooms.”

I’m sure other hotel booking sites have a similar paragraph in their T&C’s.

My advice.

It is worth spending time researching the hotel, and even give them a call a few days after you’ve made the booking and also before you depart to ensure that your not going to have any issues on arrival at your holiday destination.

I am starting to think that booking with a travel agency is much more safer than booking independently. Has anyone had a bad experience when booking a hotel room online or being left stranded by the hotel and the hotel booking agency?

An interesting day, at lunchtime I had a telephone interview with a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post regarding my Travolution consumer blog award. Then just after lunch I received a phone call from Sky News asking if I would go on television and talk about Heathrow Terminal 5.

Unfortunately, it would have meant a trip to one of their studios during work so I had to say no. On Saturday morning I have another interview, this time with BBC Radio Leeds regarding the state of the public transport system in Yorkshire and particularly in Leeds.

Watch Sky News, tonight at 7pm to hear more about the lessons to be learnt from Heathrow Terminal 5
It seems that no lessons have been learnt. BAA have to report back to the government in 2 months time, but BA have said that the T5 opening should have been delayed. It took them how many years to plan the opening?

This travel consumer blogger is being kept busy.

I’m becoming fed up of ranting about airlines, so I thought for a change I would rant about hotels on behalf of a friend who asks why they charge so much for room telephone calls. She made a call home using the hotel room phone because her mobile battery had died on her.

When she looked at her bank statement she found that the 3 minute conversation cost her £3.75. Okay, so it’s not a massive amount of money, and had she been more observant when signing out of the hotel she should have queried this with them.

On a recent stay at a London hotel, if I wanted room service it would have cost me an extra £5 for them to bring the food to me, up one level. Thankfully, I wasn’t in need of room service, and even if I was there’s no way I would have paid this extra charge – what will be next.

Is it just me or are hotels taking travel consumers for idiots with their ridiculous rates for services.

We’ve been talking about Americans visiting England, but how have your experiences been the other way around. I’ve flown into the United States three or four times and each time I’ve sworn I’ll never do it again.

There are plenty of great places to visit but just the process of getting through the immigration checkpoints is so stressful and threatening that I want to avoid it. Immigration and passport control officers, as I understand it, are trained to be unfriendly so that they have a better chance of catching the bad guys.

They’ve always treated me in such a way that I start to feel like a criminal, even though I’ve done nothing wrong and have legitimate reasons to visit the US. This weekend The Times had an article about some changes to the airport procedures in the US which they say will help make it a “stress-free airport experience”.

It turns out that the intimidating procedures they’ve been using until now have made even innocent passengers look so nervous that staff have been suspicious of them, and that’s made it hard to spot the passengers who really were doing something wrong.

Starting off at Washington DC’s international airport, they’re making security checkpoints more user-friendly and relaxing - even purple mood lighting is involved! However, these checkpoints also include the new body-scanning procedures.

The scanners apparently project a kind of naked image of each passenger onto the screens in the control room, to check you’re not carrying anything you shouldn’t be. I’m not sure that I’ll be feeling any more relaxed knowing that’s going on.

Are there any good or bad stories about landing in the US?

Apparently, the government are looking at introducing travel cards on every train, bus and coach network so when I travel to Edinburgh I would swipe my travel card, this would show my travel activity and help MI5 and other security departments monitor mine and other residents travel movements.

It’s bad enough that we have CCTV every where we walk, and the over the top security at airports. I know that we have to be security conscious in an age where terrorists have the UK high on their most wanted list, but there’s taking it over the top and I think this is.

I was surprised to learn that in London, the Oyster swipe card, covering the Underground and buses, already records the details of around 17 million travellers automatically. Similar travel systems are planned across Britain, including Leeds and Edinburgh, within five years.

Anyone else think that this is outrageous?

Well, not quite, but apparently, over 25 million American’s will visit countries abroad this summer despite the credit crunch and poor value of the dollar. Surprisingly India is one of the countries expected to see the biggest increase of American tourists.

This isn’t an anti-America blog post like you may have read on numerous other blogs, but what annoys me are American tourists that spend all their time in London, and never venture north to the historic city of like York or the scenic Lake District National Park.

Yes, London has those cute red telephone boxes, home to the Royal family, but there’s more to England and I’d like to hear more American accents up here in the North of England. You can take a train from Kings Cross to York in 2 hours, or a cheap internal flight to Leeds in less than an hour.

Am I wrong, do American’s venture to other destinations in England, let me know your opinions.