Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Sky high...

As I mentioned earlier, Husband and I are taking a trip to Hawaii this month to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. We booked the trip through Expedia a few months ago. I had searched the internet for the best deals and we wanted to make sure that we got "just the right" trip.

We will be flying out of Oakland Airport, which is not that close to our house, and thought that maybe we should switch to one of the closer Bay Area airports. I called Expedia to see if this was an option. I was told that Hawaiian Airlines charges $150 PER LEG PER PERSON for any changes to the itinerary. That would be $600 to change it! Plus, it would have been about $200 cheaper to fly out of a different airport than Oakland, but Hawaiing wouldn't refund that money because it was a package deal.

Wow. Obviously I didn't change the flight, but it made me think. Should I have taken the risk that the hotel or flights would have been sold out and waited until closer to our departure date to make the reservations? We would have saved about $300 (or maybe more) if we had waited. Have any of you found a good rule of thumb for travel? Which works better as far as maximizing your savings: booking early or booking at the last minute?

1 comments:

Amy @ The Q Family said...

I think it depends on when you travel and what season of your destination. I recently booked a condo at Destin. I waited till last minute and got a great discount. The reason I did that because I knew that the time that I want to go is off season. Plus I checked the availability regularly to make sure that there are plenty of rooms available. But that's only hotel. I don't know about airline tickets though. We haven't flown for a while.

I can't wait to hear about your trip. Hawaii is my dream destination for our 10 years anniversary. So I would love to hear about your plan and your experience.

-Amy @ The Q Family