I booked a hotel overseas via Expedia the other day and they sent me a free mobile SIM card provided by Sim4Travel. It is a really good idea. A prepay SIM which gives you reasonably priced local calls in the country where you are travelling (about GBP0.25 per minute) but – even more importantly – lets you receive calls forwarded from your home country for free. It is a major bugbear for Europeans that a short trip across a national border can become really expensive thanks to one or two long phone calls from the office.

I was as much impressed by the marketing as the product. It is extremely shrewd of them to partner with Expedia and thereby reach a vein of highly-qualified customers. Props all round. …