Multi-trip holidays

callum9999

InsideInsurance wrote: »

If you are DIYing its worth checking with the airline(s) on the phone what the prices are going to be rather than booking things as a series of one way trips.

Certainly when we did our multi-centre trip to India with BA just being used for the outward and return leg their website prices were silly but over the phone it was half the price plus they were able to do an Avios upgrade which their website had said wasnt possible

That's rather unusual. Booking it under multi-city doesn't make it a "series of one ways" - it would price, for example, LON-MIA, NYC-LON as a return.

If you can only get stupid prices, and no-one on here can help, then I'd agree calling is best though.

MasterPoo

Another irritating thing about booking through 3rd Parties, is having to arrange transfers yourself. For e.g. I'm doing a Multi Destination holiday I managed to get Atlantis the Palm, Dubai 4 nights in Delux room for £2050 for 3 Adults, Atlantis offers free shuttle services, but because I booked this using a 3 rd Party I can't utilise it??!?!?! The rd party supplier is charging £80 Return for Transfers.

So much better when you do everything yourself, you're more in control.

callum9999

MasterPoo wrote: »

Another irritating thing about booking through 3rd Parties, is having to arrange transfers yourself. For e.g. I'm doing a Multi Destination holiday I managed to get Atlantis the Palm, Dubai 4 nights in Delux room for £2050 for 3 Adults, Atlantis offers free shuttle services, but because I booked this using a 3 rd Party I can't utilise it??!?!?! The rd party supplier is charging £80 Return for Transfers.

So much better when you do everything yourself, you're more in control.

From Dubai airport? Taxis are cheap - it shouldn't be more than £50 or so return.

And are you sure they have a transfer? I can't see anything about it - only their mall transfers.

MasterPoo

callum9999 wrote: »

From Dubai airport? Taxis are cheap - it shouldn't be more than £50 or so return.

And are you sure they have a transfer? I can't see anything about it - only their mall transfers.

I see on the Atlantis website it states where the Transfers depart from at DBX, and that Guests should book their Transfers online.

InsideInsurance

callum9999 wrote: »

That's rather unusual. Booking it under multi-city doesn't make it a "series of one ways" - it would price, for example, LON-MIA, NYC-LON as a return.

If you can only get stupid prices, and no-one on here can help, then I'd agree calling is best though.

The pricing was almost identical to just booking LHR-GOI and DEL-LHR as two separate single trips on their website. The BA telephone rep said at the time that their website does struggle with multi-centre bookings at times.

Maybe/ hopefully they've improved it and/ or no other airline has similar issues but it was only last year when it happened to us so thought it was worth putting the warning out there.

InsideInsurance

MasterPoo wrote: »

Another irritating thing about booking through 3rd Parties, is having to arrange transfers yourself. For e.g. I'm doing a Multi Destination holiday I managed to get Atlantis the Palm, Dubai 4 nights in Delux room for £2050 for 3 Adults, Atlantis offers free shuttle services, but because I booked this using a 3 rd Party I can't utilise it??!?!?! The rd party supplier is charging £80 Return for Transfers.

So much better when you do everything yourself, you're more in control.

To be honest, its simply different booking through third parties. Sometimes you get better deals direct and sometimes you get better deals via third parties.

When going to the Maldives it was massively cheaper to book the hotel via a third party than direct and after negotiations they threw in the sea plane transfer where as the hotel themselves wouldnt change their prices at all and wanted £300 or so for the transfer. Similarly I've seen things like AI basis only being available via agents and not direct etc.

On the flip side have known many hotels been more than happy to match other offers and throw in a few extras etc to cut out the middle man

There is no one size fits all and to get the best value you have to explore many options. In our Maldives trip we only booked the hotel & transfers from the tour operator, we booked our own flights and other hotels ourselves

Liquidity

What's the best way of comparing prices of multi-city tickets? Skyscanner doesn't appear to offer this option

richardw

Liquidity wrote: »

What's the best way of comparing prices of multi-city tickets? Skyscanner doesn't appear to offer this option

Try https://www.kayak.co.uk