Heading to LA and NYC
Near the end of the month, I’ll be spending some time on the left and the right coasts of the US. I know that plane tickets are not an inexpensive purchase, but I’m not really willing to spend several hours hunting in order to get another £40 off or whatever. I go in with a mental price cap that I’m willing to pay, and if I quickly find something under that, I may check another couple of sites to see if there’s anything cheaper available. Start to finish, it usually takes me under 30 minutes from research to purchase.
I booked my flight into LAX, and my flight home from JFK, which Virgin Atlantic will let you do without much hassle. This, after spending way too long trying to get any joy from the multi-stop flight booking systems on several travel sites (Travelocity, which usually gets a lot of my business, was broken; Opodo was the best, and Lastminute - partnered with Travelocity - offered me only fares which, when I tried to buy them, they claimed were actually sold out…but which Opodo still had in stock).
I’ve gone out of my way to ensure I’ll be flying JetBlue from LA (Burbank) to JFK, because I just really, really appreciate JetBlue’s service. If I’m honest, though, the best thing about them is the ability to pass a flight by watching 36 channels of live television. Okay, so I only tend to watch about three of those channels (MTV, Bravo, and the Food Network), but it sure does make time, er, fly.
Filed under: Life, Travel, Treating Customers Well
Expedia is good for multi-city trips. I am planning to fly into Montreal, go to Quebec City, then home from QC. Not only do they have no problem a) booking the non-contiguous ticket and b) giving me tons of hotels to choose from in each city, but they also - this is key - do NOT assume I need a car rental or flight to get to QC from Montreal. They just ask you if you want to hire a car, and as I am taking the train, I simply said no.
I tried to compare Expedia’s Montreal/QC deal with other sites, specifically Travelocity and Orbtiz, but I couldn’t get a package that didn’t assume I was FLYING multi-city (i.e. taking another flight from Montreal to Quebec). So, there you are. Travelocity and Orbitz lose my business because they can’t do something so simple as multi-city trips.
Oh, and P.S. - another thing Expedia lets you do that the others don’t is book a hotel for only part of the trip. So if you are spending part of a trip in a hotel and part visiting or travelling locally, it doesn’t assume you are flying back on your check-out date. I do this for my British visits all the time - I’ll fly into Gatwick, spend a few days in London at a hotel, go visit friends or hire a car and hike Dartmoor, and only then return to Gatwick for departure.
Seriously, this all seems so obvious when you think about it. How come Expedia is the only site that DOES think about it?