Calling home to the UK from Florida

While you are enjoying your Florida holiday there might be times you find that you need to get in touch with people back home in the UK.

This is something that we regularly receive enquiries from our customers about, asking for advice on the best and most inexpensive ways that they can do so. Whether this is to check in on how much your pets have been missing you, or even to just smugly update the rest of the family on your amazing holiday experiences to make them jealous, you will find that there are various options open to you. Below are a few of our top tips for staying in contact with people back home!

Thankfully with so many people now having smartphones it is possible to make your important calls free of charge whenever you have wi-fi access. This can be achieved by using any of a range of popular apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Viber. As you may already know, wi-fi is available free-of-charge in all of our villas, as well as in the majority of restaurants in Florida (Cracker Barrel being one notable exception). Supermarkets such as Publix and Walmart also helpfully provide their customers with free wi-fi access, so you can take the opportunity to make a quick call as you stock up on your supplies, or you could even get the rest of the family to do the shopping while you dial home! If you are out and about soaking up the Florida sun and exploring its many attractions, theme park wi-fi hot spots are also readily available, though you might find that you are too busy enjoying the rides and entertainment that is on offer to have enough time to make phone calls!

Of course it is a given that these smartphone apps will only work if you are calling another person who has the same app installed on their own phone. If you use software such as Skype on your mobile you can call people on either their smartphones or computers (assuming that they have the correct peripherals set up in order to handle voice over internet conversations). Whatever way you try to get in touch, you would need to check their accessibility before trying to contact them!

If, however, either you or the person that you are trying to contact does not have a smartphone or does not feel confident about using any of the applications that we have mentioned above, you can always get in touch with your mobile network provider before you travel out to Florida. Some plans will (for a small additional monthly fee) allow you to take your existing call plan to the US where you can then make phone calls and texts for the same price as you would enjoy back home.

Another sensible option when you find that you have to ring a UK landline, and also one of the easiest and cheapest ways that there is to do so, is with an International Calling Card. These handy cards can be purchased at various outlets around Florida (for example Walgreens and CVS stores both sell them) and you then simply use the phone in your villa to dial the published local number, enter the calling card number and then the phone number you require to ring back home, not forgetting the international dialling code (this is +44 for the UK). These calls can work out extremely inexpensive (1 cent per minute), so you won’t have to break the bank as you phone them in order to arrange a bigger overdraft for more spending money for the rest of your holiday!