Monday, March 21, 2011

A few tips for booking cheaper travel

1. Sometime if you are trying to book a flight with a layover all in one price, the cost can be higher. So, here is what I did. For example, I wanted to book a flight from San Antonio, TX to Amsterdam, The Netherlands but I have to stop over in Houston, TX before the direct flight to Amsterdam. When booking it all together the cost was somewhere around $980. So I decided to book a flight to Houston from San Antonio, as they were having discounted flights within Texas on the same airline. THEN, I booked a flight a few hours later directly to Amsterdam. The grand total for my ticket then? ....$720! Be careful to book the    first flight into the SAME airport you plan on flying out of and give yourself a few hours to make the next leg of your journey. Trust me, it will pay off in the end and besides a few hours in the airport these days is barely enough time to go through security so the wait time will fly by.

2. Another option is to look into nearby airports for better travel deals, I have even gone so far as to calculate the cost of gas getting to the nearby airport into my overall cost. For example, when I took my first trip to Bangkok last year I decided to fly out of Austin, TX on southwest airlines on my first leg to Los Angeles (about an hour and a half away from where I live). If you plan the timing right you can get that first leg of your journey over quicker and so much cheaper then booking multiple legs with a single carrier. I flew to asia on Thai Airways and the all inclusive flight would have cost me somewhere around $1800...one way! BUT, by driving to Austin and having lunch with a friend before my first leg and spending about 4 hours in LAX, my ticket came out to be $1000 AND I flew premium economy (think unlimited booze and shrimp for your in-flight meal)

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