How To Book Travel

The reality of budget airlines and why I took the bus to Prague

For a lover of travel, the best thing Europe has to offer is having a completely different culture nearly at your fingertips…traveling from country to country in Europe requires less financial investment and often less time than traveling from state to state in the United States.

More affordable European travel is mostly due to a fairly robust train system, and incredibly low-cost airlines (low-cost as in, flying to Paris from Milan for $20). Airfares from low-cost airlines such as EasyJet, RyanAir, and WizzAir are, at face value, a traveler’s dream, made possible by the groundbreaking  “Open-Skies Treaty” in 1992, removing government restrictions on airspace.

The chance to fly throughout Europe at discount prices offers a lot of opportunity for the seasoned traveler with energy, patience, and time to spare. But the reality for the rest of us is that there’s a lot of expense, time, and effort that is in excess to the advertised discount airfares, which can be especially aggravating to the inexperienced traveler.

RyanAir, the king of low-cost airlines, topped Zagat’s list as the #1 worst airline in the world, receiving a measly score of 4.16 out of 30 possible points in customer feedback surveys. On the bright side, at least you’ve been forewarned. As a British expat said to me recently, “Well, at least RyanAir is number one in something.”

IMG_7507All that being said, on a recent opportunity to meet a friend in Prague and faced with the choice of a 125 euro round-trip RyanAir flight to Prague from a small airport 3 hours by train or car from where I live in Bologna, or a 15 hour bus ride, I chose the bus.

Here’s why:

1. Hidden airline fees
While baggage, beverage, and snack fees have become an industry wide standard, discount airlines take these fees to another level. 

  • BAGGAGE FEES
    Easyjet, for example, allows one carry-on and only one, so ladies, that means you either save room in your carry-on for your purse, or you’re going to be charged a baggage fee.  While RyanAir seems to be “generous” with their carry-on policy permitting a small bag as well as a regular carry-on, they instead search for other, more unexpected ways to extract money out of you.  For instance, if you don’t pay for your baggage online in advance of getting to the airport, they charge you a much higher baggage fee (I paid 100 euro for my bag when flying on RyanAir from Milan to Stockholm).
  • “PRINT YOUR TICKET AT HOME” POLICY
    RyanAir’s infamous “print your ticket at home” requirement has bitten me in the butt twice. Once on my way back home to Bologna from a trip to Paris, I lost my return ticket I had printed before leaving on the trip and had to pay the 10 euro fee to print my ticket at the printing kiosk at Beauvais. I was lucky they had a printing kiosk, as many airports don’t and the fee is even higher if you have to print it at the check-in desk.
  • SMART PHONES DON’T HELP
    With the advent of airline smart phone applications, I thought I had finally overcome this most annoying aspect of flying via RyanAir by being able to use my smartphone e-boarding pass, only to find out at the airport that RyanAir doesn’t permit non-EU citizens to use e-boarding passes, another predatory procedure aimed at tricking you out of your money, as the procedure is not clear via the app, and is not related to government policy (EasyJet, for instance, permits the use of e-boarding passes by non-EU citizens) and is instead taking advantage of travelers who are never originating from their home city and therefore with fewer resources for printing their tickets.

2. Extra ground transport time and fees
When you are visiting larger European cities, the low-cost carrier airports are often located further away from the cities, and require more time, creativity, and money to get to and from the airports, which ultimately cuts into your vacation time.

  • DISTANT AIRPORTS, SPARSE TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS
    Luckily in smaller cities like Bologna, the low-cost airlines share the same airport with the major carriers. But in most major cities this isn’t the case.
    For example, Beauvais is the low-cost carrier airport serving Paris. It takes about an hour to travel by bus to Paris from the airport. But the real challenge is getting back – the buses don’t run often and the bus company knows the airport schedule. If you arrive at the bus station – which is outside the center of Paris and requires a bit of time on the metro to reach – less than three and a half hours before your flight, the bus will have already departed for the airport and you’ll get stuck sharing the 125 euro cab fare with a few strangers in order to make it to the airport in time. Don’t worry though, the cabs wait by the bus station for unfortunate souls like us, so you’ll have no problem finding a cab (yes, unfortunately, I’m speaking from experience).
  • GROUND TRANSPORT CAN RUN INFREQUENTLY WITH DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND SCHEDULES
    Take it from me – make a mental note to learn the bus schedule of (often) the only method of transport to and from the airport serving your low-cost flight as in advance as possible, as sometimes this is no easy task when traveling in a non-English speaking country.
    Yes, along with my eventful experience in Paris, I’m also referencing my nail-biting wait in line with my nearly indecipherable general admittance bus ticket behind several hundred other anxious budget travelers at Stockholm’s bus station in the wee hours of New Year’s Day, as (luckily) the bus company called a sleepy bus driver to come in on short notice to accommodate the especially numerous tourists that morning. If I had been able to read the schedule better and had done my research in advance, I would have arrived at the bus station earlier. Which brings me to the next important point:
  • BUY YOUR TICKET IN ADVANCE / WIKITRAVEL IS (always) YOUR BEST FRIEND
    Always check (the life-saving) Wikitravel before you leave on your trip and see if you can buy your bus ticket online.  This will save you the inevitable wait in line behind everyone else on your plane to buy your bus ticket.
    In airports like Brussels South Charleroi Airport, your ticket bought in advance online could save you hours, as the electronic kiosks to buy your bus ticket at this airport are iffy at best,* and the majority of travelers whose ATM/credit cards are not accepted by the kiosk must wait in line to buy their ticket from the one in-person attendant available, who tends to take lunch during peak arrival times. I eventually wizened up and payed a local returning home in cash to put my ticket on his card at the kiosk and was able to get on a bus to Brussels without an really significant delay.
    I’ll never forget pulling away from the curb and seeing the hundred people (including many from my plane) camped out in line for their bus ticket in front of the “gone for lunch” sign at the attendant’s empty window. Take it from me (and all the people waiting in that line), read Wikitravel for the city you’re visiting before you get there! The Brussels entry had explicitly warned travelers about this problem, but unfortunately I didn’t read the entry until I was on my to the airport, so it was too late to buy my bus ticket in advance online.
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My happy friend Chris who met me at the Brussels bus station after I narrowly escaped the drama of the airport.

3. Additional accommodation fees, taxi fees, and/or major loss of sleep
Budget flights do not run as regularly between the destinations they serve as regular carriers do, and the flights often take place at less desirable times of day, like very early or very late. 
This could mean that you’ll arrive at your destination late at night, or that you’ll take off very early in the morning. And remember, most major cities do not run their public transportation 24 hours per day.

  • TOO LATE/TOO EARLY FLIGHTS
    It is easy not to consider enough just how much your flight time affects the way your organize your trip. For instance, if you wanted to head out on your vacation on a Saturday morning, but there are no morning flights offered and you are left with the choice of leaving a day earlier and paying an extra night of hotel stay, or leaving twelve hours later and losing most of a day of vacation, what do you do? An extra night of hotel is not a budget option. If you added the hotel stay to what you paid for the flight, you could probably afford a non-budget flight leaving at a more comfortable time of day.
  • MISSING YOUR FLIGHT BECAUSE THE METRO WASN’T OPEN YET
    Early morning flights can infamously depart sooner than it is possible to arrive at the airport via ground transport, or sooner than the metro that brings you to the ground transport starts to run.
    My friend Lauren missed her EasyJet flight out of London for just this reason – she had afforded enough to time to get to the airport, not considering that she might have to wait for the metro to start running in the morning. Wikitravel’s London page actually has a section describing how to sleep at London Stansted airport, as so many people riding EasyJet and RyanAir have encountered this problem over the years.
    With no public transport options early in the morning, your choice is to sleep for free on a bench at the airport, pay to sleep at an airport hotel, or pay for expensive door-to-door ground transport. Honestly, I don’t know about you but none of these options sound so great to me.

4. Lots of time and attention needed to meet stricter baggage and liquid requirements
If you’re flying low-cost, that probably means you don’t want to spend the money to check your bags. But take it from me – check them, and do it as in advance as possible. 
Check your bags when you originally book your ticket, as that’s when you’ll be offered the biggest discount for the checked bags. You can also check them when you check-in online for less of a discount. Do not check your bags spontaneously at the airport, as they will charge you a crazy fee.
Checking your bags saves you the stress of packing. And stressing/wasting time on packing is never worth it – that and the lack of stuff you’ll have access to for your trip (because checked baggage allotments are so minimal) can quickly negate any of the positive benefits you’re deriving from your trip.

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Arriving in Bologna on my first RyanAir flight.
  • STRICTER LIQUID POLICIES
    Discount airlines are often stricter about their baggage and liquid policies in airports only serving low-cost carriers. There is no customer service mandate that prevents them from caring about making you feel like a criminal because you forgot you had Chapstick buried in the bottom of your purse, so security lines at low-cost airports are often longer and more stressful than security lines at other airports. Save yourself this stress and worry by tossing all your liquids in your checked baggage. Then you can stand in the security line worry-free (as long as you arrive early enough for your flight!).
  • DON’T FORGET ABOUT WINTER AND SOUVENIRS
    Getting to your destination is one thing, but weathering long days being a tourist outside in winter without enough warm, heavy clothes to keep you warm because you weren’t able to fit enough in your carry-on is absolutely no fun. Also, layering is only fashionable to a point. I spent a freezing May in London pretty much wearing everything I had fit in my carry-on every day. I think the last time I was so perpetually unfashionable was in 1993.  Fortunately I’m not a souvenir gal, but I know many of you are. I can assure you there won’t be space in your bag for it, and forget bringing back a bottle of wine or heaven forbid some olive oil. But if you are flying low-cost there is still a way around it.  If you go crazy souvenir shopping, add a souvenir tote bag to your shopping list which will afford you more space to dump all your (non-liquid) souvenirs in the tote to carry-on, and then check your luggage in when you check-in online.

5. When you count out all the hours that go into all of the effort to take a budget airline, sometimes a bus or a train is actually a faster way to go. 
If I had flown to Prague instead of taking the 14 hour bus, I would have had to take a bus to the train, to another bus, to a plane, and then to another bus.

Including all connections, airport time, and flight, it would have cost 200 euro (train and bus tickets add up quickly) and would have taken about 11 hours. Instead, for 100 euro round-trip, I got to relax on a comfortable – albeit non-luxurious – bus with phone service the whole way, frequent pit stops, super friendly drivers who gave us free water and cookies, and as much luggage and liquid as I wanted to bring. All this without a stress or worry. No delayed flights, no standing in line, great view.  Loved it.

I’m making a habit out of this actually. In January I took a train from Milan to Paris, and tomorrow I’m taking the train to Munich. Another great alternative to discount airlines. You can find timetables for train travel across Europe on the German website, Bahn.

But if you really still want to fly, I understand. Just please, all I ask is remember these tips so you don’t have to suffer quite as much as me and my friends have…;)

* Kiosks may now be working better, as this occurred in 2012.

Priceline: How to make it work for you

Priceline has forever changed the way I book hotels when I am traveling within the United States.  I now see pricing and booking hotels as a process of negotiation, and the better I am at it, the more I save, and the more I can travel.  Over the years, I have acquired a few techniques for maximizing Priceline’s potential to save me money.  Here I’d like to share a few with you.

1.  Don’t settle for face value – always “Name your own price!”

It may seem a bit risky to bid on a hotel room instead of choosing your hotel directly through Priceline’s hotel listings.  But believe me, whatever risk is involved (very little, in my opinion) is minimal compared to your potential savings (up to 75%!). It is true – when you bid, you don’t know what hotel you are booking with until your bid is accepted.  But Priceline allows you to specify how many stars you prefer, and this makes it highly likely that your hotel preferences will be met.

In my experience, the hotels I have stayed in through Priceline bookings are on par or sometimes even better quality than I would have managed to find on my own, and I most likely would have spent much more.
The biggest drawback to the bidding process is a loss of control regarding where your hotel is located.  In general, the bigger the city, the more likely that Priceline will give you the flexibility of narrowing the neighborhood where you prefer your hotel will be located significantly enough to ensure your satisfaction with the location.

Please remember that if you have a car and are trying to stay in the city center of a large city, there are usually large parking fees for the hotel garages.

2.  Time is your friend.
Sometimes the bidding process is not ideal if you know exactly what you want from your hotel and what you want to spend on it.  If your bid is very specific, there are potentially only a small number of hotels that can meet your bid, and you have no way of knowing what their bottom line is.  Priceline controls your bidding process by forcing you to broaden your search by decreasing your star level or increasing the areas you are willing to stay every time you lose a bid.

But, you can continue to bid without changing anything about your original bid once every 24 hours.  So, if you plan ahead, you can begin your bidding process several weeks ahead of time in order to ensure you get the lowest price possible.  What I have done in the past is begin my bidding very low ($40), and then re-bidding with the same parameters and increasing my offer by $5 when I am permitted to every twenty-four hours
Keep in mind, this process is absolutely not necessary if you are flexible about your star levels and location, because as long as you change your bid parameters each time you bid, Priceline allows you to continue to bid as many times as you like.

3. Do some research first – your potential hotel is not as much of a mystery as you may think.
If you spend just a few minutes looking at the hotels listed at face value on Priceline’s site for the city and dates you need, you are actually looking at the inventory Priceline is pulling from to meet your bid for the “Name your own price” side of their site.  If you like what you see, you can be confident that you will be happy with whatever hotel accepts your bid.

Most importantly, this research allows you to familiarize yourself with the pricing of hotels for your city and time-frame so you have a better idea of where to start your bid.  If the lowest listed price for a hotel within your preferred star category is $150, then you can be pretty sure that your starting bid has to be a decent offer, and if you are bidding last-minute, you will need to bid higher.  On the other hand, if the price range of hotels you like on the site spans as low as $75 for example, you know your starting bid can be much lower.

4. Get an app!

With the help of my iPhone Priceline app I have booked hotels while standing in a theatre lobby in mid-town Manhattan, while in the passenger seat driving through South Carolina, standing in line at the airport, etc.  Many times I have used the app and literally checked into my hotel as little as a half hour later.  The app makes the process simple and quick.  It doesn’t have all of the information available through the website, but it will redirect you to your phone or iPad’s browser if necessary.

5.  If you are indecisive, Priceline is either your best friend or your worst enemy.
If you have trouble deciding on hotels and often find yourself spending hours of time researching every hotel option in the city you are traveling to, Priceline is a godsend because it does the research for you, in that the hotels it works with are comfortable and usually rank highly in customer reviews.  You can finally let go and save yourself all the research time and spend that time researching other critical things, like transportation options to and from the airport (if you are flying).

On the other hand, once you book a hotel through Priceline, you are charged immediately for that hotel.  If you happen to need to change your dates for any reason, this can be difficult to impossible to pull off.  So beware.  In this case, Priceline might end up costing you money instead of helping you.

Please note: I am in no way making money from advertising or sponsorship related to my travel tips.  I write these tips solely from personal opinion.  Also, these tips are related to booking hotels through Priceline, as I do not use Priceline for airline bookings.

My secret recipe for booking a good hotel room, every time.

My secret to hotel booking.
Booking comfortable, affordable and centrally located lodging is possibly the biggest and most underestimated challenge related to travel planning.  While there are many ways of going about meeting this challenge, over the years I have perfected my own system that I am now happily sharing with you.  In the following step-by-step instructions I hope to save you not only time but also money on your next vacation.

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So, let’s imagine that you are booking your dream trip to Venice, Italy.  A popular and sometimes quite expensive travel destination, it can be very difficult to know where to begin in your search through hundreds of hotel options, many seemingly quite expensive.
Instead of even attempting to evaluate the scope of accommodation options available to me in Venice, I instead save myself perhaps hours of time by going to a trusted travel expert – Frommers.com.
Frommers.com provides reviews on many things, but their hotel reviews are invaluable as they are reliable, clear, and most importantly, they are written by travel professionals.  This is an important point, and is the major reason their reviews are so trustworthy.
1.  Find a trusted and professional reviewer’s hotel listings for the city you would like to visit.
For our trip to Venice, I went to Google.com and type “frommers, venice” in the search bar, because my favorite professional travel review resource is Frommer’s.  Fodor’s also works, as does Lonely Planet, etc.  Use whatever source you are comfortable/familiar with – the important thing is that they are professional reviews, and not just reviews from the general public that have stayed at the hotel.
When I type Frommer’s Venice into google, the page I was looking for was the first result, which I clicked on to arrive at the homepage for Frommer’s information about Venice.  I then clicked on the left-hand side of the screen where it says “Venice Hotels” and “List All.”
Below is a screenshot of what you will be seeing when you are looking at the Frommer’s hotel listings for Venice.  You can sort the list by stars, price, name, and neighborhood.  I normally sort by price and then choose the hotel with the most stars.  For the sake of this blog post, let’s pretend we will select Hotel Al Piave, as it has a three star Frommer’s recommendation and is in a lower price range, listed as only one dollar sign.
An important note: Frommer’s star system is not related to the normal hotel star system.  Instead, their star system refers to their recommendations for hotels and is not related to the amount of amenities the hotel offers.  A Frommer’s 3-star hotel is their most recommended hotel, while a Frommer’s listing without stars is still recommended but not as highly recommended as their other listings.

2.  Read the hotel reviews to find the one that suits your needs. 
Next, I clicked on the name of the hotel, Hotel Al Piave, in order to read Frommer’s review, and to make sure that it sounded like the type of hotel that I would enjoy staying at.  Normally if the hotel has any major inconveniences related to location, architecture, amenities, etc, Frommer’s will mention it in the review.

3. Do a general search for hotels at your destination and in your date range on Kayak.com.
Kayak.com is like a giant search engine for travel, allowing you to gain a perspective on the general price range of the type of travel you are booking in that area and timeframe.  Kayak is able to do this by searching prices listed from a huge number of discount travel websites like Expedia, and Hotels.com to help you find the best price available on the internet.  I also like Kayak because it includes even more information than pricing, like Tripadvisor reviews, and an interactive map with all the hotels in the area you are searching for to help you get a great idea of location.
Below, I have typed “Venice, Italy” and my dates under the hotel search section in Kayak.

4.  Price the hotel(s) you are most interested in and check availability on Kayak.com.
Once Kayak has performed a search for available hotels in Venice for my date range, I then narrow the results by searching specifically for the hotel or hotels I found in the Frommer’s reviews that I am most interested in.  In this case, we liked the Hotel Al Piave.  Kayak offers many options for narrowing your search on the left-hand side of the screen within the search results.  Toward the bottom of these options, you will find a search box that says “Hotel Name.”  Here I type “Piave.”  Kayak found two hotels with “Piave” in the name, but only one is in Venice.  I click on the hotel in Venice to confirm this is the hotel that I am searching for.

5.  Confirm the hotel information matches the information from the Frommer’s review, and check out current prices and more reviews at Kayak.com.
I arrived at Kayak’s detail page for the Al Piave Hotel, which you can see below.  Because the name is slightly different on the Kayak listing than the Frommer’s listing, I confirm this hotel is the same by comparing the contact information listed for the hotel here with the contact information listed with Frommer’s.
The information matches, so I know I have successfully found the hotel that Frommer’s was recommending.  Here on the Kayak detail page I can get tons of information, including more hotel reviews from other travel sites, as well as the pricing for the hotel on about 15 major travel discount websites, and  more information about the hotel’s location.

6.  Check pricing on the hotel’s website.
Before I book my hotel, I need to perform one more important step. Now that I have researched current pricing for the hotel, I need to compare this pricing with the pricing on the actual website of the hotel itself.
As surprising as this may sound, most of the time I book my lodging directly through the hotel itself, because most of the time the hotel offers pricing that is competitive with what the online discount sites are offering.
As you can see below, the Hotel Al Piave is no exception, with a room available that is even less expensive than on the discount sites.
Let’s say for the sake of this discussion that instead of being cheaper, the prices listed on the Hotel Al Piave’s website were more expensive than the prices listed on the discount travel websites.  Before I book with another website, I would give the hotel a chance to match the other website’s price by calling them and telling them about the rate I found, and if they could sell the room to me directly at that rate.  Most often they can, as they would much rather book directly with you than have to offer service fees to outside agencies selling their rooms.

7.  Book your room!
After completing all my necessary research on my stay in Venice in about twenty minutes, I am ready to book my room directly with the Hotel Al Piave.  Booking directly with the hotel has many advantages as opposed to booking with a discount site “middle-man,” including more control over your reservation, as well as – in many cases – a more understanding cancellation policy, etc.
Do remember to always book with your credit card when possible, as your credit card company serves an important role as your advocate if something goes wrong with your room or with the billing.
And most importantly, enjoy your trip!!!
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Another important note: It is important that you know this system is relevant for both North American and European travel, so once you learn it, it will serve you well on a large variety of vacations.  Kayak.com and Frommers.com are the two websites I use, and while both of these companies are American, I’ve found that being an American, my standards for lodging are high and I am not as willing to compromise my expectations for lodging as much as I am willing to adjust my expectations for food, transportation, and sight-seeing.  Therefore, the information and recommendations by these companies on both American and non-American lodging is quite relevant, as their frame of reference matches mine.