Which comes first: flight or hotel?

[frugalone]

Just wondering:

What do you book first: your flight, or your accommodation? I am planning a trip to London, England, and while I was there before, I never had to deal with this as I stayed with some friends. I just booked the flight and that was it.

Thanks!

[razz]

If there is a challenge to getting a hotel in a chosen area, it is well to make that booking first and then arrange the flight to work around the availability, airport transfers and options for sightseeing. If there is not challenge, then go for the flight with some tentative bookings on hotels.

[iris lilies]

When traveling alone or with spouse, I didn't book rooms. I suppose that was risky, but I did it and lived to tell about it. I did that because it was just too much trouble to coordinate all of the booking, as you are finding.

Around the big train stations in London are loads of hotels. I always went low end and remember walking away from a small hotel or two for too high f a price only to find that yeah, what they were quoting was the going price indeed.

The last time we travelled to the UK it was a group of us, so in order to have enough rooms we were forced to plan ahead and book it all in advance. I took care of the Edinburgh leg, my cousin did the rest, and that was a LOT. bless his heart for doing that!

[sweetana3]

I act as our travel agent and always have. We book the flight first since it is usually our biggest expense. I even check flights and costs before making a reservation for a tour. Then we start checking hotels and now we are checking sites like ABnB for apartments. Found in London and Paris, we could get an apartment for the same or less than a hotel room. We love having a kitchen.

ps: I love doing it. I am frustrated travel agent at heart.

[Alan]

We haven't been to Europe in several years but when we used to go every couple of years, we eventually settled on using budget travel sites to arrange flights and accommodations as a package. We had great luck with www.go-today.com

[Gardenarian]

Flight, definitely. You can always make a tentative reservation at the hotel - most hotels are pretty good about cancellations and refunds and date changes. Airlines, not so much.

[jp1]

I would do the flight first, for the reason Gardenian states. I may look for hotels first but not book, just to make sure i'm not going during superbowl weekend or whatever where hotels are unusually full or expensive.

[Tradd]

Flight first.

[kib]

Flight first. You can also sometimes get a much better deal if you're flexible by a couple of days, so you wouldn't want a hotel until you know for sure what the dates are. www.kayak.com (http://www.kayak.com) is really good for finding cheap flights and they give the option of flex dates right when you filter.

[Teacher Terry]

Flight. Also like Alan we have gotten some great deals that include flight & hotel. WE never do one that includes tours because we hate being told how long to spend at a place & being herded like cattle.

[iris lilies]

Flight. Also like Alan we have gotten some great deals that include flight & hotel. WE never do one that includes tours because we hate being told how long to spend at a place & being herded like cattle.

I think tours CAN be a good thing and there are creative ways to use mass tours.

Coordinated bus tours are good for taking in large gulps of a geographic area because they are very efficient in transportation. Why would you even want to do that, some people would ask. Well, it's to get an executive overview of a place.

In 1970 my parents took me and my brother on one of those U.K. in 2.5 weeks. We went north to,the Highlands in Scotland, and went down to Cornwall and saw sights in between, including Stonehenge when you could walk up to the stones and touch them (now they are corded off.) from that trip I got a sense of places I wanted to revisit, and places I didn't need to see again. That was a great trip to provide a baseline experience of that region.


Our Swiss relatives did the same thing for all of DH's 20 some family members. They rented a buss for a long, very long day trip, and we went all over Switzerland in a day, seeing various famous tourist sites. From the two hours we spent in Lucerne I got the bug to go,back there, and we've been there several times since.

Planned tours are also good if you've got a group of people needing several hotel rooms and no special interest in an area, just a general tourism goal.

Also, one can use the itineraries of planned tours for one's own touring. I often look at "great gardens of England" and " literary tours of England" tour itineraries to,get ideas for trips.

[kib]

I appreciated a planned tour trip in Thailand. It's a place I basically only wanted to see once, so a broad overview that took us on the expected sights was fine. Also very nice not to deal with hotel and driving logistics in a country where you can't speak the language or read the signs!

[jp1]

Years ago I did a 3 cities (Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok) of Asia trip that was 11 days of flights, hotels and 1/2 day tours in each city. The whole trip was a bargain, arrangements were simple and included transport to/from each airport and hotel, and the 1/2 day tours were just enough for us to see the major highlights of each city quickly. The rest of our time in each city was spent either going back to things we wanted to see in more depth or visiting places that hadn't been on the tour. For someplace(s) that I didn't think I'd ever be going back or wasn't super excited about visiting I'd totally do that type of trip again. I don't want to be stuck with a tour group for days on end, but this was the perfect combo of group activity and enough time for us to explore on our own.

[Simplemind]

Generally always the flight first.

[iris lilies]

I appreciated a planned tour trip in Thailand. It's a place I basically only wanted to see once, so a broad overview that took us on the expected sights was fine. Also very nice not to deal with hotel and driving logistics in a country where you can't speak the language or read the signs!

Omg!!! We did that same trip in the late 1980'!s!! I loved Bankok, liked
Singapore well enough, was indifferent to,Hong Kong.

[Simplemind]

Don't want to hijack this tread but will quickly say we just got back from a tour. It was FABULOUS. Still testing the tolerance for travel since DH had his stroke. It was a wonderful rail package of New England. We took a motor coach between states and had a rail experience in each. We also had a cruise on Lake Winnepesakee plus a ferry ride to Martha's Vineyard. Never rode a subway so we took one from Boston to Salem on one of our extra days.
I so loved that trip. It was easier on my husband to not concentrate on driving and he could see all he wanted to see. I have never been to the NE or even East part of the country. I have to go back.
This was one of the only times I booked flights second.

[Gardnr]

I have multiple windows open and essentially do both at the same time. I am unwilling to buy a plane ticket and then find out there is no place to sleep because there are HUGE events at my destination and everything is booked. THis happened to a friend of mine on business. She had to stay in a cheesy hotel nearly an hour away from where her business was adding 2h commute to her workdays :(

[kib]

I do agree with the idea of checking both before making any reservations at all, but I've lost hundreds by waiting on booking flights.

[catherine]

I think you're good at this point, because you're so far out, but in general, I agree with flight first, hotels after. However, as Gardnr said, make sure you're not picking dates going into a city in which there's a major event or holiday because hotel prices will skyrocket, if you can find any at all. "Major event" can include a big corporate convention. I've fallen into that trap a few times on business travel. Microsoft has a corporate meeting in Seattle and you're lucky if you can get a 3rd rate hotel for less than $500. BTDT

[Dhiana]

I have multiple windows open and essentially do both at the same time. I am unwilling to buy a plane ticket and then find out there is no place to sleep because there are HUGE events at my destination and everything is booked. (


We travel often and have found we are the big event, Ironman Triathlons, so finding s place to sleep is essential, then flight.

There is little reason anymore to book flights early, those deep discounts are just not there anymore. I did book our latest flights "late," less than 28 days before, and surprisingly found a $15 disc from when we looked 2 months prior.

Is everyone buying the more expensive changeable/refundable flights?

We have signed up last March for another Ironman in Melbourne Mar 2016, and just found out there is a problem in that the dates may be changed...it's easy to change hotel rooms/dates. Not so for flights for us at least.

[frugalone]

Someone on another forum told me to wait until January because there are better deals. However, no one else seems to think there are deals at all. It's like, when you find a price you can live with, buy your ticket.

[kib]

Which airport would you be flying out of?

[catherine]

I know there are "secrets" to getting lower fares, but I don't know what they are. I found one site that said the day of the week you book the travel makes a difference, but it didn't say what day that is.

One site said that if you go to a travel site and book a flight with a rental car, the airline fare will be significantly less.

Another site says Google Flight Search is the best source for cheap flights.

[frugalone]

Newark


Which airport would you be flying out of?

[kib]

If you're willing to make a stop in Iceland and fly into Gatwick instead of Heathrow, Iceland Air will take you there round trip for $537. If you want a direct flight to Heathrow, British Airways looks the best around $701. This from www.kayak.com (http://www.kayak.com)

[frugalone]

I'm on the Iceland Air site right now and I'm getting a RT of over $1K. Confusing...Maybe because of my dates?


If you're willing to make a stop in Iceland and fly into Gatwick instead of Heathrow, Iceland Air will take you there round trip for $537. If you want a direct flight to Heathrow, British Airways looks the best around $701. This from www.kayak.com (http://www.kayak.com)

[catherine]

I'm on the Iceland Air site right now and I'm getting a RT of over $1K. Confusing...Maybe because of my dates?

Probably has to do with your dates. I put in a Saturday outbound and a Sunday inbound in May and got an Iceland Air flight less than $500. kib is right: 700-770 seems to be the price otherwise.

[frugalone]

I think the rates go up at the end of May because of Memorial Day and a bank holiday in England. Earlier in May they are cheaper.

[catherine]

I think the rates go up at the end of May because of Memorial Day and a bank holiday in England. Earlier in May they are cheaper.

Could be.. I just found a non-stop in early May on United for 443. How many days are you traveling? And are your dates flexible?

[iris lilies]

Shoulder season, that's April and May, are less expensive than high season which is June - August.

At least, that's the way it used to be to go to Europe and I doubt things have changed.

Winter is your cheapest time. We went to the U.K. once for two weeks after Thanksgiving. It was relatively mild even up in Northern England and Scotland.