 |
One of our readers, Marla, wrote to me last week about a trip she is planning to Europe for June of 2008. Marla’s trip, like many trips to Europe, involves more than one destination. I’d like to look at the options Marla has in hopes that it will help her and others to plan easy, affordable European summer vacations. Here is what Marla had to say:
This is what’s called a Circle Trip (a three or more leg trip back to the origin with no surface (rail or car) breaks). Generally speaking, each leg of the trip is priced as half of a round-trip (you would never try to price each leg separately as one-ways, the price will be 4-8 times higher)… |
The first order of business is to shop each leg in research mode on FareCompare.com to get a good price point and take a look at the season price break points to see if your flexible enough to change your dates to get on the good side of one of these seasonal price point changes (Trans-atlantic travel has 4 or 5 season price breakpoints). You always shop the international return portion from the origin (not from Paris->Dallas, but Dallas->Paris), so in this case it would be half the roundtrip price of Dallas->Athens, Dallas->Paris and Athens-Paris.
Because I have seen tons of airfares each day for years (way to many actually) I can quickly tell you that anything under $1000 (out the door) from Central U.S. to Europe — during the summer — is a good deal and will average about $1200. The leg from Athens to Rome shouldn’t be more that $200 or so dollars. So the target price point for this trip will be around $1250 out the door (this would be a good deal).
Alas — $275 or more of this will be fuel-surcharge ($150) and international taxes ($125).
Now that your target price point is set, the fun begins.
Online booking engines call this a Multi-City Trip and you should go to multiple sources because none of them can search deep enough or work well enough to get you the best deal (I’ll show you how to work with them to get the best deal shortly). Try our tool FareCompare multi-city, Expedia and Orbitz. You will see wildly varying results and because it has a smaller market city — Athens — a change of airline is almost certain.
Because Marla’s plans are flexible and she is savvy to be shopping very early, I would always suggest trying to fly on a Tuesday or Wednesday when possible, as these are generally the cheapest days to fly international (Sometimes Monday and Thursday as well). There is usually a $20-40 up-charge each way for weekend travel (Fri, Sat, Sun).
I already told you to shop multiple sources (which you would have done anyway), so I will highlight Expedia instead of FareCompare.com since it will be similar (we don’t sell tickets, just the final research and then you are sent to a ticketing supplier or an airline to finalize).
So putting in the best days for Marla (after clicking advanced multi-city on Expedia), you get the following using these dates — June 11 (Wed) for DFW to Athens, June 17 (Tues) for Athens to Paris, and June 22 (Sun) for Paris to DFW:
Whoops!, $600 above our target — not good.
Now here is the trick with this trip to get a better deal — the Athens - Paris leg is causing the search engine heartburn because it is trying to book you all the way through and it isn’t doing a very good job really.
So since we are going from Athens-Paris in the middle of our trip lets remove it and try an Open Jaw query (trip back to origin with a surface break — without Athens Paris — remember that we should be able to this leg for $200 or so …). Removing that leg you get:
Ahhh!, much better about $1000 — which was our good deal European roundtrip price point.
You can pick up that Athens-Paris one-way for $200 or less anytime in the next for or 6 months, or even now — I checked it was $220 and you have made a good overall deal - around $1250.
Now a couple of things I should make sure you note:
- 9 months out is a long way away and this $1000 trip has a 2 stopper on the outbound which is no fun (I would wait for a good 1 stopper if at all possible in this $1000 range)
- I would normally not tell people to buy 2 tickets, but in this case there are 5 days before the return leg so there shouldn’t be any problem getting to Paris, even if the odd strike or two shuts down an airline or airport (the trains usually run when they are on strike for air …)
I know this all sounds so complicated — and to be honest it is — being your own travel agent on these types of trips is tough, I good travel agent would use this same technique (not just punching in the dates and taking the first thing offered) so you might be better off using one.
So, if you do your research, you can feel comfortable about your booking. You do need to reconfirm everything when you’re 30-60 days out from departure, though, as international routes booked far in advance are likely to change a bit.
Multi-city trips are a great way to see Europe, and if your travel plans are flexible, you can really find some great deals. Marla, I hope this helps, and I hope it helps other travelers who want to head overseas for the summer.
Thanks so much Rick! That helps a lot. Now to get busy and book!
Comment by Marla — September 22, 2007 @ 9:41 am
If Marla happens to have enough miles for award tickets on AA and its partners, she could do a 3-leg trip with Paris as an allowed stopover. Flying directly to or from Paris (DFW-CDG) would allow Paris to be your European gateway in either direction, and you can stop there for a nice chunk of time with an award ticket. It should work in either direction, and I’d book that now!
Comment by nmlhats — September 27, 2007 @ 1:41 am
i ahve used the allowed stopover for both paid and award travel with little if any incremental expense - trick is to find an airline that serves all 3 cities - helps if stopover is their European hub - use multi-city on their web site or just call
Comment by spence3787 — September 27, 2007 @ 10:07 am
Rick,
Regarding the Multi-city Europe trip. We have found it is much cheaper and tends to work much better to do one of two things with multiple cities trips in Europe.
1) Purchase round trip tickets from US to Desired European location (We prefer Ireland, Dublin or Shannon, for price AND wonderful visits); then use the cheap European Airlines (RyanAir) for hops within Europe.
2)Purchase round trip tickets from US to Desired European location; and use the trains for Travel within Europe. The trains can be much faster, when compared to complusory early arrival for flight check-in, security, baggage collection at destination etc. The trains are much more entertaining; people seem more willing to chat and the scenery much nicer. Then there is the convenience with the train stations in the heart of the cities.
With the distance from Athens to Paris, the trains work well if the trip is embraced (Splitting the trip with an overnight such as Nice or Monaco… and Catching a TGV to Paris.
Thanks for your wonderful travel sight… It is the best… LOVE farecompare…We are on it daily to check for our next trips.
Sincerely,
Phil Leverault and Pat Hastings
Comment by Phil Leverault — September 27, 2007 @ 12:27 pm
To keep the overall ticket cost down, you may want to consider a lowcost tour package. Usually you can change the return date to accomodate your plans if you want to visit multiple cities.
Comment by Vic Cantarella — September 27, 2007 @ 2:29 pm
Marla,
One option I suggest is to find the cheapest ticket you can get with Farecompare to just about any European country, then fly from there to your desired destination with an airline like Ryan air or Easy Jet. They offer one way fares from almost every major European city for as low as $20 US taxes included! Unfortunately I don’t think they fly to Athens, but your Paris trip would be covered at least, and with those prices you can explore some other great cities as well. I did 7 countries in Europe last summer for about $250, that’s seven one way fares, taxes included! Flying within Europe is extremely cheap. Just watch out for baggage regulations.
Hope that helps
Rigo A.
Comment by Rigo — September 27, 2007 @ 5:30 pm
THANK YOU Phil Leverault and Pat Hastings! I have been looking for tickets flying into London from SFO and out of Rome, back to SFO for next summer. After reading this article I was thinking that my price point of $800 RT was out of reach and I would need to re-think what I was trying to accomplish. However, with your wonderful suggestion of flying into Dublin and taking Ryan Air (and they do fly out of Rome as well!) I am happily within range, flying non-stop into Dublin and allowing me to take 36 hours and enjoy the city before beginning our 3 week/3 country vacation. RT SFO to Dublin was $697 RT(tax, title and out the door) Ryan Air to London 9.99 Euros ($17+ USD) plus baggage fees.
Susan Gill
Comment by Susan — October 1, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
I’d search a bit about Ryan Air before giving them my money. I’ve never flown with them, but it seems really easy to find an awful lot of complaints…
-John
Comment by John R. — October 2, 2007 @ 5:33 pm
Easyjet flies from Athens to Paris non-stop. For less than $100 that is.
Comment by Ed — October 11, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
4 people traveling. Depart DFW June 6, 2008 to BCN and return to DFW on 6/16. We are NOT flexible with our travel dates. We need to arrive in BCN for a one night pre-cruise stay 6/7. Board NCL (cruise)on the 6/8 at 7 pm. Return to port on the 6/15 in Barcelona and stay one night in hotel. Fly to DFW on 6/16.
This is our first overnight flight. Worried we will not be comfortable.
Any advice on: Best USA hubs to BCN?
Type of plane for overnight flight?
Which airline to use?
Nonstop flights to BCN?
All HELP / ADVICE is appreciated!!
THANX & HAPPY TRAVELING!
Pamela
Comment by Pamela Wehner — December 6, 2007 @ 3:27 pm