Hi all,
What online websites do most UK members use to check out best fares, book tickets etc? I have just booked return tickets for Jan 2022 & I have never seen so much variation in fares between different websites & dates.
I think I was very lucky to have entered certain dates & managed to get a very good deal on VS Premium Eco but it was luck rather than help from the websites. It appears very difficult to try flexible dates & get a reliable fare. In addition there are other variables like luggage etc which not all websites factor in.
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- PatrickZ80
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Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
Personally I mostly use SkyScanner for that. Not really fair perhaps because SkyScanner is not a booking site, it's a search and comparison site. They don't handle the booking, they just point you towards where you can book the cheapest. However SkyScanner is able to search on specific dates, a whole month or even "whenever". They also offer the option to search for flights to/from other nearby airports, which is convenient if you're not tied to a specific airport.
Luggage is very difficult because it's an optional extra, I'm not aware of any website where you can search including luggage. However if you know the airlines and you more or less know how much they charge for luggage you can still make a fair comparison. Personally I never look at it because I rarely travel with luggage, at most I got a hand luggage trolley but that's it. I don't need much when I travel, I think the last time I checked any luggage was 15 years ago or something like that.
Luggage is very difficult because it's an optional extra, I'm not aware of any website where you can search including luggage. However if you know the airlines and you more or less know how much they charge for luggage you can still make a fair comparison. Personally I never look at it because I rarely travel with luggage, at most I got a hand luggage trolley but that's it. I don't need much when I travel, I think the last time I checked any luggage was 15 years ago or something like that.
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- TexasAirCorp
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Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
I tend to prefer just going through the airline's own site, but Kiwi.com is really good.
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- PatrickZ80
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Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
TexasAirCorp wrote:I tend to prefer just going through the airline's own site, but Kiwi.com is really good.
They are, but only for searching. Kiwi is great for finding the best flight options but they don't always offer the best prices, in fact they rarely do. So once Kiwi has found the trip you want to take, write down those flights and close the Kiwi website. Then look up those same flights straight with the airlines, good chance you'll save a nice chunk of money by booking them there compared to booking at Kiwi.
It's always good to separate the process of finding which flight you want to take and the process of booking that flight. Too many sites try combining those two, Kiwi included. SkyScanner is the only site I'm aware of that separates them.
Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
Just let an independant travel professional with GDS live flight seat availability search out best fares. So many online booking sites are not live.You'll have a personal contact to help when things change or get cancelled as they do in the current travel enviornment.
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- PatrickZ80
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Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
TC957 wrote:Just let an independant travel professional with GDS live flight seat availability search out best fares. So many online booking sites are not live.You'll have a personal contact to help when things change or get cancelled as they do in the current travel enviornment.
The problem with such independent travel agencies is that they need to make money too, so while the service might be superb the price certainly isn't. In fact you pay top price and even then you have to guess they book you on the flight which is most convenient for you. Often travel agents have a tendency to book their clients on airlines that grant them the highest profit margins, which are not necessarily the best choices for their clients.
Of course it never hurts to ask a travel professional to make you an offer, however don't feel obliged to take up on that offer. Just take it into consideration and compare it with all other search results (and prices) that come up. Don't be afraid to ask that travel professional questions on why they didn't offer you another combination of flights which you found elsewhere or why you found the same flights they offer you somewhere else for a way lower price. Travel professionals don't like those kind of questions but it's needed to keep them sharp and make them work for you instead of themselves.
Oh and by the way, booking sites not being live might have been the case several years ago but nowadays most of them are. And of course the booking engines at the airlines themselves are always live, they bypass GDS and handle the booking straight at the source. Travel agents are middle men which you can easily do without, you can save a lot of money by doing a bit of work yourself instead of having them do it for you.
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- CrookedBill
- Posts: 32
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Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
I agree, don't use those so-called independent travel professionals. They make things needlessly expensive.
It reminds me of the time my dad had booked us tickets to BUD where I had a girlfriend back then, he's a very old-fashioned man so he asked a travel agent to book us two tickets. He came home with two BA tickets LHR-BUD for which he had paid a grand sum of money, more than I would ever have paid for it. The flight sucked, it was delayed for several hours and when he called the travel agency about it they said they couldn't help us and would just have to wait.
The next time I booked us two tickets on W6 LTN-BUD, not with a travel agency but straight with Wizzair. LTN is actually more convenient than LHR from where I live and I paid less than a quarter of what he had paid. What's more, the entire flight experience was much better. Dad told me when he went to the travel agency they didn't even offer him a flight on W6, they only offered BA.
But even for flying BA it turned out he could have saved almost half the fare by booking straight at BA instead of at the travel agency. So dad learned a valuable lesson then, no more travel agencies. Always book straight with the airline, that's the best and cheapest.
It reminds me of the time my dad had booked us tickets to BUD where I had a girlfriend back then, he's a very old-fashioned man so he asked a travel agent to book us two tickets. He came home with two BA tickets LHR-BUD for which he had paid a grand sum of money, more than I would ever have paid for it. The flight sucked, it was delayed for several hours and when he called the travel agency about it they said they couldn't help us and would just have to wait.
The next time I booked us two tickets on W6 LTN-BUD, not with a travel agency but straight with Wizzair. LTN is actually more convenient than LHR from where I live and I paid less than a quarter of what he had paid. What's more, the entire flight experience was much better. Dad told me when he went to the travel agency they didn't even offer him a flight on W6, they only offered BA.
But even for flying BA it turned out he could have saved almost half the fare by booking straight at BA instead of at the travel agency. So dad learned a valuable lesson then, no more travel agencies. Always book straight with the airline, that's the best and cheapest.
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- davidjohnson6
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Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
The average a.netter has significantly more knowledge about air travel and tickets than the average non a.netter. Average - we are all individuals; some know more, some know less
It is likely that the average a.netter has significantly less need for a person to act as travel agent, than the average non a.netter. There is a definite neeed for knowledgeable people to act as travel agents.
Arranging an itinerary for people aged 70+ across multiple cities with air travel, accommodation, transfers between airport and hotel, visas, day excursion to nearby national park, etc... is where you really need a human being to handle this.
Selling a simple short-haul round trip on an LCC to an a.netter is probably not a good example of such a need
It is likely that the average a.netter has significantly less need for a person to act as travel agent, than the average non a.netter. There is a definite neeed for knowledgeable people to act as travel agents.
Arranging an itinerary for people aged 70+ across multiple cities with air travel, accommodation, transfers between airport and hotel, visas, day excursion to nearby national park, etc... is where you really need a human being to handle this.
Selling a simple short-haul round trip on an LCC to an a.netter is probably not a good example of such a need
Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
May I respond to the above posts. LCC's in general do not work with any 3rd party suppliers, whether on-line or otherwise, so a simple flight booking is indeed best conducted straight with them. Agents will need to put a handling fee on the fare to book them, either as part of a package or flight-only. But good luck trying to contact a LCC if you need to and their website can't help.
I agree that us a-netters are a clever bunch most of whom have the time and knowledge to handle our own travel arrangements. However, has anyone doing so thought about the financial protection and personal security data implication of doing so ? You'll never know who has access to all your personal data needed to be entered these days to complete a travel transaction. Regarding fares, you should realize most good agents often have access to consolidated nett fares with most leading scheduled airlines at below-published public rates. And ones which often include checked-in luggage.
This last two years has seen good travel agents really come to the fore handling all the multitude of issues surrounding the travel world we live in now.
And a good agent will work for you, the client, not the airline or whoever they book with.
I agree that us a-netters are a clever bunch most of whom have the time and knowledge to handle our own travel arrangements. However, has anyone doing so thought about the financial protection and personal security data implication of doing so ? You'll never know who has access to all your personal data needed to be entered these days to complete a travel transaction. Regarding fares, you should realize most good agents often have access to consolidated nett fares with most leading scheduled airlines at below-published public rates. And ones which often include checked-in luggage.
This last two years has seen good travel agents really come to the fore handling all the multitude of issues surrounding the travel world we live in now.
And a good agent will work for you, the client, not the airline or whoever they book with.
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- PatrickZ80
- Posts: 5801
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Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
TC957 wrote:Agents will need to put a handling fee on the fare to book them, either as part of a package or flight-only.
And it's just that handling fee which makes booking through an agent expensive, most people are not willing to pay that fee. I know I'm not. For me, the most important thing about flying is the fare and I'll do whatever it takes to get the lowest possible fare. Cheap isn't good enough, cheaper is better but I only go for the cheapest. If that means a lower service level then so be it. I don't need luxury, I only need to get to my destination.
TC957 wrote:But good luck trying to contact a LCC if you need to and their website can't help.
In all those years and all the many LCC flights I've taken I've never needed to contact them. I agree, if you do they can be a pain in the ass. But what's the chance that you do? That support has to be paid for somehow, a good support department results in a higher fare. That's not fair towards the people that don't need support, which is the majority of passengers.
TC957 wrote:However, has anyone doing so thought about the financial protection and personal security data implication of doing so ? You'll never know who has access to all your personal data needed to be entered these days to complete a travel transaction.
In that a travel agent is no different than an airline, wherever you book they need personal security data from you. Data can be leaked from a travel agency as well, so what's the difference?
TC957 wrote:Regarding fares, you should realize most good agents often have access to consolidated nett fares with most leading scheduled airlines at below-published public rates. And ones which often include checked-in luggage.
The fact that those net fares are below the published price shows that the airlines offering them are needlessly expensive, which is reason number one not to fly them. If they can offer those net fares to travel agents, they can offer them to individual passengers as well. The difference between the net fares and published fares should end up in my pocket, not in theirs. Luckily with the LCCs it does.
Oh, and who needs checked luggage? I don't so I'd rather see it excluded from the ticket price. If it needs to be included that results in a higher ticket price which I'm not willing to pay.
Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
Good luck finding a scheduled airline then that doesn't give high-producing travel agency chains good net fare deals, and stick with using only LCC's then.Same with hotel chains, in fact not just the chains, they have net rates with leading travel agencies too. And car rental companies in some cases.
Fair enough about not needing checked-in luggage, if you fly for short durations only. But most people don't and checked-in luggage rates seem to be going up all the time.
Fair enough about not needing checked-in luggage, if you fly for short durations only. But most people don't and checked-in luggage rates seem to be going up all the time.
Re: Best online ticket booking site UK
The recent ban on UK tourism to France and the subsequent turmoil to the upcoming ski season to the French Alps has once again highlighted the benefits of booking an ATOL-bonded package with a travel agent. Instead of relying on the goodwill of the accommodation supplier for any possible refunds, and having to take airline credit vouchers for cancelled flights, a package has to refund in full in 14 days all monies paid. Although in practice it's usually a bit longer than that.
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