Last month we spoke about the Stopover Loophole Strategy, a cunning way to score an amazingly cool deal, especially if you’re looking to go somewhere warm.
Quick recap: a stopover is a planned stop of more than 4 hours (domestic) or 24 hours (international) between flight segments on a trip.
BUT, these stopovers are sometimes allowed for free or a very small fee, AND you can have a stopover that lasts a day or even weeks.
And to our mind, that means Hello Holiday!
In our example we showed how a Los Angeles—New York return flight in Business Class typically runs $1,767, but when Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, is included, the overall price can actually drop to $1,295, a savings of $472 despite adding an extra destination.
Low-fare-fabulousness can come in various ways; one is by trips priced as multiple single tickets, meaning each leg of the trip is priced as a one-way ticket.
Here’s an example:
Above we see a trip booked as several multi-city trips on one ticket, versus three one-way tickets. The difference is an astounding—$3,515 cheaper the multi-city way.
Sounds incredible, right? Airlines price multiple destinations differently—it’s what is often referred to as “breaking the fare.” Sometimes breaking the fare into separate tickets is best, and sometimes combining them into one ticket is best. Best for you, that is.
FCF, Why Are You Telling Me This?
You may be asking, “Bennett, who cares how airlines price tickets as long as I get a great deal?”
Fair enough. But we wanted to point out that when you see the comment, “The X tickets in your itinerary must be booked separately,” don’t panic.
You’ll often hear it suggested to not mix tickets because bags could get lost or late flights can cause chaos and the like. But those problems don’t apply here because you’re staying in one place—you’re not connecting through and changing flights on top of one another.
Just note that fees can apply per ticket, so buying separate tickets would mean paying change or cancellations fees on each ticket. That means you want to be confident you don’t need to do this as the savings would be lost.
Play your cards right and get a free vacation on your next trip,
to places like Cabo San Lucas.