A JAUNT

I bought some cheap flights to Queenstown in August where Lynn and I will spend a week leading up to my birthday. I haven't yet booked accommodation, hoping that better deals will be available closer to the day.

It's a nightmare booking hotel accomodation nowadays as the booking sites - Booking.com, Trivago, 
Agoda, Expedia, HomeAway, trip.com etc all hijack the requests for on-line information. I've had bad experience of these sites when we were overseas. They are leeches and, when something goes wrong, are very unwilling to give refunds. I prefer to deal with the hotel direct.

There are so many hotels in Queenstown now and I'm unfamiliar with most of them. We used to travel to Queenstown a lot for skiing, adventure and my work marketing wine. We haven't been there now though for some years and expect that the town has changed a lot. If the weather is bad we don't want to be stuck in crappy accommodation so I'm looking for a deal on the 5 star joints. Fortunately the high paying Yanks, Chinese and Japanese tourists won't be there due to border restrictions so we might get lucky.