Change your pounds in a bank in the country you are visiting, as you could get a better exchange rate, says Lastminute.com's Matthew Crummack.
It may be a good idea to take British pounds and euros, which get a better exchange rate in Cuba than the United States dollar.
Crown Currency Exchange and its partner business Crown Holdings Ltd went into administration in October 2010 owing £16m and leaving as many as 8,000 people without foreign currency they had bought in advance to get a better exchange rate.
WeSwap, the London-based startup that helps travellers get a better exchange rate when changing currency in advance of a trip, has closed a decent-sized $7.5 million series A round, adding to the $2 million previously raised.
Andrea Woroch, consumer expert at Kinoli Inc., a Colorado Internet marketing company, said consumers might get a better exchange by simply selling their unused gift cards to friends and then using the cash to buy airline miles.
You can sometimes get a better exchange rate at a Cambio, which is a legitimate foreign exchange facility.
Founded in 2011 by former Deloitte employee Philippe Gelis, Kantox offers a marketplace for businesses to exchange currency, including peer-to-peer, thus enabling them to get a significantly better exchange rate than that offered by the banks or traditional brokers.
When I first settled in Rome in the early 1970s, it was common knowledge among resident foreign journalists that you could get a much better exchange rate for the Italian lira from your dollars or pounds by visiting the Vatican's own bank, situated inside a medieval tower next to the Apostolic Palace inside Vatican City.
If you're a small business that's providing health insurance to your employees, you can get a better deal through these exchanges.
Insurance companies would have to warn consumers what protections their policies don't cover and would have to inform consumers they might get a better deal on the exchanges.
