6:19 PM Finding the Best Holiday Airfare and Hotel Deals - SmarterTravel.com | ||||
Just about everyone knows that holiday airfares vary tremendously, depending on which specific days you want to fly. And you also know that if you wait too long, you find nothing left in airlines' seat inventories except the highest-price tickets. The upshot is that you should consider locking in your holiday air reservations early. And, fortunately, you have some good sources of information. CheapAir is the first website out of the gate this year with a holiday-airfare travel calendar. The initial posting covers the Thanksgiving and year-end holiday periods. Advertisement
Priceline posts a similar calendar every year. Normally it doesn't go online until late October, but in response to a request, Priceline's Senior Travel Analyst Brian Ek has already developed some preliminary figures:
For years, travel on the main holiday days has always been slow that's when most folks want to be where they're going and also in those "sandwich" days between a major holiday and an adjacent weekend. I remember, long ago, flying on a 747 from New York to San Francisco on the Friday after Thanksgiving with only four passengers. And I also remember a New Year's Day 747 trip on TWA (yes, it was a while back) from London to Los Angeles with about 60 passengers in a plane that held 460. Hotel accommodations, of course, are a different story. Resort-area hotel rates tend to remain high during the entire Thanksgiving weekend and the two-week Christmas New Year's period. The same goes for vacation rentals. Accommodations bargains, if any, will be in big-city business-oriented hotels. As always, you can never outguess the timing of last-minute sales. All you can do is cast as wide a net as you can for airfare information, sign up for a bunch of deal alerts, and be prepared to act quickly once you spot a good deal that fits your plans. If you wait until shortly before the holiday period, be prepared to scratch around for anything at less than top dollar. On routes where airlines quickly run out of cheap seats and hotels say they're fully booked, keep in mind that big wholesale tour operators often have reserved inventories of rooms and tour-basing airfares even after airlines and hotels say they have nothing left but full-fare economy or that they're full. Also, if fares to the most popular spots and hotels are either unavailable or expensive, consider an off-the-beaten-path destination. And wherever and whenever you go, remember that air traffic will be heavy and weather in much of the northern U.S. and Canada could be lousy. That means allowing extra time for anything and, especially, giving yourself an extra hour or two at the hub anytime you have to use connecting flights. Ed Perkins Seniors on the Go is copyright (c) 2015 Tribune Media Services, Inc. You Might Also Like:
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