As I prepare myself for the inevitable drinking and eating gorge-fest of the next two weeks, I’ve also been reflecting on the year (of travel, especially) that it’s been. This year we’ve been all over, starting with a few short domestic staycations including the incredibly luxurious Powerscourt, then to Kuala Lumpur and on to Koh Lipe, followed by trips to Verona, Lake Garda, Port Aventura, Rome, Milos, Athens, London to attend WTM for my first time as a travel blogger, and finally Heidelberg and Frankfurt for the Christmas markets. Phew!

So looking back, what have I learned that I’ll be trying to do different to make 2025 the year of continued enjoyable, stress-free, excellent travel?

Less Guesswork Booking, More Travel Advisor Expertise

This year, after a multi-year Instagram friendship, we started listening to the advice of, and booking more often through, our friend and luxury travel advisor, Steve Michailidis, founder of thirdpassport travel. I can’t stress this enough – some of the top perks and privileges we enjoyed at places like Powerscourt Hotel in Ireland, Santa Maria Luxury Suites in beautiful Milos, and Hotel Casa Monti in Rome, all came from Steve’s recommendation (at no additional cost or obligation to go with his suggestions), with the same pricing we’d have otherwise paid, all in the comfort of knowing someone was taking care of our reservation directly with the hotel at all times.

This has to be one development of 2024 we’ll be carrying forward with great gusto into 2025. I’m delighted to also announce, given our great experience, we’re now partnering with Steve to bring his expertise to WSP readers – if you’re keen to know more, visit this page where you can get in touch with him directly and start planning your next trip.

On the other hand, some of the most disappointing hotels we experienced this year – ahem, Heidelberg anyone? – came from our best efforts at booking direct, including hours spent poring over good ‘reviews’. Not to be repeated.

Airport Transfer Headaches Begone

After years of experimenting with the most stress-free, enjoyable ways to get to the airport (both at home and abroad), we’ve learned to let ourselves just be driven – except in rare circumstances (Milos, in other words). Getting to and from Dublin Airport is not particularly easy or enjoyable – there’s no train, the buses at least for us are slow or infrequent (or both), and my various attempts at driving generally end up an expensive, traffic- and toll-ridden nightmare. Let’s not even start on the ever-dwindling long term car parking supply…

Here at home in Ireland, we’ve started using Eirexecutive – a very affordable, luxury chauffeur option, with several categories of vehicle available to suit every group (and more importantly in our case, luggage) size. The cars themselves are always luxurious, spotless and modern, with friendly, punctual drivers, and best of all, a stress-free drive that’s generally quite a bit less even than driving your own car when you factor in tolls, fuel and parking for your trip.

Airline Loyalty – Being Strategic

Last year will go down in history as the year that my multi-year gradual plummeting of status from British Airways from Gold downwards finally levelled off back at ‘Blue’, which is basically nothing. In the meantime, I decided to start trying slightly harder to maintain Aer Lingus AerClub status, and at least one other belonging to the major airline groups.

There’s so much online discussion about airline status as a means to accessing lounges, and that’s true although all airline lounges are being battered by ever-increasing numbers of eligible passengers. For us, the bigger benefit has been the relative security of being sat together where we did or didn’t pay for seat selection, access to the priority check-in queue during some extremely busy ‘first wave’ mornings out of Dublin Airport, and fast track security. Another benefit I feel like nobody ever touts as much as is probably deserved is the general disregard paid to hand luggage size or weight when in a priority boarding queue. Flying to Athens this year with Aer Lingus, we were stunned to see active policing (and charging) of carry-on items – except in the AerClub queue.

Suffice to say, while Ireland is our home (for now, never say never), this is one loyalty program we’ll do our best to stay on the good side of – especially now there’s reciprocal earning and benefits with Aer Lingus and my old friends, British Airways (and a few others). We’re also at this stage not too far off the ‘useful’ level of status with Star Alliance, via Turkish, thanks to trips on Aegean, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines in the last year.

So that’s it – another year done, and more travelling than ever; and critically, more enjoyable, Champagne-fuelled, stress-free travel than ever before thanks to the above. What would you add to this list? What’s on your Travel Resolutions for 2025?