Booking a holiday

Big Chris

Big Chris

Big Chris

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Taking the Mrs to New York for our anniversary next March - done some searches on lastminute.com and have seen 4 nights with flights in various central NY hotels for around £1500.

Will the prices stay around this much if I leave it until later in the year/early next year to book, or is it worth snapping it up now? I don't have £1500 spare at the moment so it would go on a 0% credit card for now. Would rather leave it until I have the loot but worried the prices may go up closer to the departure date.
 
The biggest driver of the price here is going to be your flights - the hotel prices will likely remain reasonably static.

Personally I see no value in booking this as a package - find a great deal on flights and a separate great deal on your hotel. Make sure you only book during a flight sale of which there will be many between now and March. I would suggest you should be able to get flights for under £400 each in Economy for March at some point.

Then you can use sites like priceline.com to get a great deal on a hotel.
 
As above really.. I would look at booking the flights now on the credit card, and look at hotels closer to the time if you would prefer to wait.
 
What sort of dates we are looking at?

Personally I don't understand the whole New York long weekend thing. It basically takes you a day to get there after the 7 hour flight, 2-3 hour check in, etc etc so to go through all that, and pay almost £1000 for two flights, to only stay there for 3-4 nights just seems bonkers.

Go for a bit longer - maybe 3-4 nights in New York and some time in Boston or Washington DC.
 
March 22nd is our anniversary - so was thinking Fri 21st to Tue 25th. Could look at bumping it up to 5 nights I guess, trying to keep costs down though since I'm forking out for this as a surprise, and there's a secondary ring-shaped expense that I need to factor in between now and then too ;)

What's all this about flight sales? Are these held by airlines individually? Been a while since I went abroad!
 
The airlines regularly have 'sales' - its a bit like DFS. They have so many that if you are travelling to somewhere like New York with plenty of notice you'd be mad to book outside a 'sale period'.

Looking at your dates the current best price is £460ish with Virgin or BA or you could save a bit and fly Delta for about £420. These are not bargains but not outrageous either.

It's about 20-30 quid per person cheaper to fly out on the Thursday instead of the Friday, as well.

Also, consider whether you actually need to stay in Manhattan. Hotel prices in Manhattan are sky high - its going to cost you a lot, 3 figures a night even for fairly medicore places.

Last time I went I opted for the Hilton at Newark Penn Station in New Jersey. This seems like miles away but it's actually built above Newark Station. The journey time by train from Newark Penn to Penn Station in Manhattan - right in the centre of New York - is about 12-14 minutes via NJTransit. So actually you can get from hotel room to downtown in about the same sort of time as it would take you to get from an uptown hotel on Manhattan to downtown - but for loads less money.

Or you can take the PATH Subway train from Newark Penn Station right to World Trade Centre. It takes a bit longer - 20-25 minutes - but it costs $2.

I paid £92 a night for the Hilton. That wouldnt even have got me into a 2 star place on Manhattan..

The money you save doing something like this could easily pay for you to rent a car for a few days and go exploring Upstate Newyork (Where you will find decent overnight hotels for £40-£80 a night) as well, extending your trip.
 
[TW]Fox;24765612 said:
The airlines regularly have 'sales' - its a bit like DFS. They have so many that if you are travelling to somewhere like New York with plenty of notice you'd be mad to book outside a 'sale period'.

Looking at your dates the current best price is £460ish with Virgin or BA or you could save a bit and fly Delta for about £420. These are not bargains but not outrageous either.

It's about 20-30 quid per person cheaper to fly out on the Thursday instead of the Friday, as well.

Also, consider whether you actually need to stay in Manhattan. Hotel prices in Manhattan are sky high - its going to cost you a lot, 3 figures a night even for fairly medicore places.

Last time I went I opted for the Hilton at Newark Penn Station in New Jersey. This seems like miles away but it's actually built above Newark Station. The journey time by train from Newark Penn to Penn Station in Manhattan - right in the centre of New York - is about 12-14 minutes via NJTransit. So actually you can get from hotel room to downtown in about the same sort of time as it would take you to get from an uptown hotel on Manhattan to downtown - but for loads less money.

Or you can take the PATH Subway train from Newark Penn Station right to World Trade Centre. It takes a bit longer - 20-25 minutes - but it costs $2.

I paid £92 a night for the Hilton. That wouldnt even have got me into a 2 star place on Manhattan..

The money you save doing something like this could easily pay for you to rent a car for a few days and go exploring Upstate Newyork (Where you will find decent overnight hotels for £40-£80 a night) as well, extending your trip.
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Reading that has saved me a good £300 - £400 on the trip I was looking at to New York.
 
Ok cheers, I'll have a re-think about the booking. I'd like to stay on Manhattan though to be honest, she's never been to NY before and I think it add to the experience even if it does end up costing more.

As for the airline sales, do you just keep an eye on their websites or are there better sites to use that compare prices?
 
March is prime "sale" time for NY flights, as everyone either went at christmas or is holding out for late spring. You should be able to get BA/Virgin flights for < £400 each (for reference, I flew to NY at the end of May for £390 with BA, from Edinburgh).

As fox said, 3-4 nights is not enough. I did 5 nights and left feeling like I'd only just arrived.

However, I'd disagree with staying outside of Manhattan. We almost opted for a big fancy hotel in New Jersey but ended up staying here. The location was amazing and all it cost is some empty floor space in the room that we wouldn't have used anyway. It was clean, quiet, has a rooftop, friendly staff etc. Being in the city meant we could just nip back to the hotel and shower/change before an evening and meant we could get right into exploring (many places within walking distance) without having to think about the subway every morning.

Edit: The above hotel was £740 (after quidco cashback) for 2 people for 5 nights. I think that is comparable with prices of hotels you'll find in Queens/NJ
 
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Not sure I want to hold out until March to get it booked if we're going that same month, might be able to get a late deal but also might end up getting screwed. Would like to have it booked up late this year or early next year if possible. Then I just have to get her to book the days off work without letting on that we're going!

Appreciate 5 days might go quite quickly, but it'll still be a great trip and she'll come back with a ring on her finger so hopefully a memorable one too.
 
Ok so flights for March are currently at around £420pp, which isn't bad so I'm gonna get those booked soon I think. I have a question though, can I book in her name without her knowing about it? Obviously the flight details etc will come to me at my email address, but there's nothing she'll have to do prior to the day in question since this is a surprise and all? I recall there being some sort of form/process you have to complete prior to entering the US?
 
Yes you can. You've got months to do things like enter passport details etc.

You will need to fill in an ESTA though, which you can do for her.
 
Slight tip whilst your looking for flights use incognito mode on chrome, those type of sites have a habit of using cookies to inflate the price as you keep looking.
 
[TW]Fox;25046199 said:
Yes you can. You've got months to do things like enter passport details etc.

You will need to fill in an ESTA though, which you can do for her.
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Assuming I have to let them know things like passport numbers and where I'm staying etc on the ESTA and not while booking flights?

Fuzz said:

:D:D
Sorry
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haha yeah that's pretty much the advice I've been given by my married friends (Holy Grail is still the best film ever made IMO :cool:)

Giggz said:
Slight tip whilst your looking for flights use incognito mode on chrome, those type of sites have a habit of using cookies to inflate the price as you keep looking.
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Interesting, thanks for the tip. I use FireFox normally but have reverted to IE10 for this mission since the Mrs uses my laptop. Is inPrivate browsing the same thing?
 
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the shadow said:
Clear Your Browser's Cookies :cool:
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I use Skyscanner extensively and have never found this to make any difference at all nor have I seen any evidence they track what you view and raise price as a result. Skyscanner doesn't sell flights, it reports prices from elsewhere.
 
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