Is the frequent flyer community better than a travel agent

[fly by wire]

Trying to plan a trip to EU in June/July, this is proving difficult due to the stopovers I am trying to do and the fact I am trying to do it OW and for under $3000 AUD.

Ideally this would be what I wanted to do (sorry if the acronyms are incorrect ):

AUS (BNE or SYD)-SIN-EU(LHR OR PAR)-Dubai-BAK(via hong kong i guess)-BNE

Pretty much all the travel agents I have been to are trying to convince me to go emirates (any even then it hasn't worked) to the point where I think they must be getting a kickback from them... Dubai seems to be the place that is causing the main problem in the trip.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Travel Guru]

The question is, why wouldn't they recommend EK on an itinerary like that??

If by kickbacks you mean commission, yes they do, but no more than any other airline, I should know, im a TA.

TG

 

[Lucky_man]

Buy a subsription to Expert Flyer or similar. Then you will see that as soon as you start adding restrictions to routing it can quickly get difficult. (ie must be OW, must have place X,Y,Z on way, Price under Z.

Now when you do this it is not hard to clock up 4 hours or more and you may or may not get a better result.

Now suppose the TA can do it twice as fast as you. So it takes them 2 hours. Now if they sell every second itinerary they prepare that means they need to recover 4 hours of time - and the comissions just do not cover this expense of time. So most itineraries are not researched as completely as they could be - but are researched as completely as the TA is likely to get paid for.

So if you want carefully crafted itineraries - pay your TA by the hour or do them yourself.

We do them ourselves, our resources and skills are not as great but we know what we want and in best position to do it. But it has taken some time to get to this skill level and we always travel into the one region so it is easier to keep the knowlege up. If flying to new region I would consider TA again.

 

[moa999]

Unsure what you mean by BAK

but agree with TravelGuru that this seems to be a lay-down fare for Emirates. They are the only natural carrier through DUB, any other fare will have to be a multi-airlne combination which is likely to be more expensive.

On oneworld out of Australia there are not many RTW/ circle fares for less than $3k and you are not going RTW.
Maybe the oneworld Circle Trip Explorer fare - but again this starts at A$3200 pre-taxes for a 3 continent

 

[Dave Noble]

This seems like an itinerary that has been especially designed for travel on Emirates given that they fly to each of the mentioned destinations with a nice easy journey
They fly BNE-SIN,
SIN-DXB-LHR/LGW/CDG etc
EU-DXB
DXB-BKK
BKK-SYD

I would suggest that the travel agents which you have been talking to have been providing good advice and that EK may well come in as the best value

Given the airlines/routings required to travel on OW, I would doubt that it would be reasonably doable on OW for less than $3000 especially given that it is peak season for Europe travel

Dave

 

[drewbles]

There is actually a BA/QF combined fare available for quasi-RTW for around $2200 inc taxes at present (has to be booked by first week of Jan 2010 iirc). TravelGuru will be able to elaborate more than I, but I did do a dummy Itinerary which was valid as SYD/MEL-HKG-LHR-AMS-LHR-JFK-LAX-SYD/MEL or similar. Perhaps that's worthwhile looking at if you don't mind the travel. You could also do LHR-LAX-MEL/SYD rather than going via JFK (I was looking as I wanted to stop off at JFK).

 

[ejb]

There is actually a BA/QF combined fare available for quasi-RTW for around $2200 inc taxes at present (has to be booked by first week of Jan 2010 iirc). TravelGuru will be able to elaborate more than I, but I did do a dummy Itinerary which was valid as SYD/MEL-HKG-LHR-AMS-LHR-JFK-LAX-SYD/MEL or similar. Perhaps that's worthwhile looking at if you don't mind the travel. You could also do LHR-LAX-MEL/SYD rather than going via JFK (I was looking as I wanted to stop off at JFK).

It doesn't go to DXB and that was 1 stop the OP had. That is why EK are the best airline for this trip IMHO.

ejb

 

[drewbles]

It doesn't go to DXB and that was 1 stop the OP had. That is why EK are the best airline for this trip IMHO.

ejb

My bad (should read more closely before posting!)

No DXB no. Apart from that, a lot cheaper, and may well be cheaper to tack on a return LHR-DXB than doing the EK fare.

 

[ChrisBNE]

Another option we've used for dedicated OW clients is QF codeshare to AUH, then seperate BA ticket to europe, but then there is no stop in SIN and would say this will be >$3k.

Alternatively RJ will offer side trips from AMM to DXB on their earlybirds, but then again no SIN, but can fly via BKK/HKG.

 

[harvyk]

I'm also going to jump on the EK bandwagon...

If it's points which your after (thus the reason you only wanted OW) then maybe consider signing up to Skywards, so you'd still earn miles, infact you'd be over 4/5ths towards silver on skywards for this trip. (21,550 miles if I worked things out correctly, silver is 25,000 miles)

 

[fly by wire]

Hi guys thanks for the replies so far I appreciate your insight and advice.

It really does seem that as soon you add Dubai into the mix it gets messy and expensive real quick, obviously as you are dealing with airlines where the middle east isn't their base!

My main annoyance with the TA was that it was all to difficult to even try and do it on OW, obviously they do not want to waste their time which is understandable.

I think I have almost accepted the fact that if you want to go to DXB and you are not on a RTW the only logical/economical way is with EKK/Etihad etc.

I might even consider just ditching DXB altogether and finding the cheapest OW fare I can to EU for this period with stop-overs and BKK and SIN.

 

[ChrisBNE]

My main annoyance with the TA was that it was all to difficult to even try and do it on OW, obviously they do not want to waste their time which is understandable.

Or maybe they have looked at this previously, and have the experience to know that it isn't a cost effective way of travelling via DXB.

While they may be paid a commission, their motivation as a sales person is more likely to be your satisfaction and subsequent repeat business.

 

[harvyk]

My main annoyance with the TA was that it was all to difficult to even try and do it on OW, obviously they do not want to waste their time which is understandable.

There is one of two things going on. The first is that they are lazy, unhelpful, and will be the first against the wall when the internet revolution comes. (Which is likely, as good TA's are rare as hens teeth)

The second is that they have looked into DXB routing not less than 2 days ago and they know that there are not many OW airlines with good connections to \ from DXB, thus didn't want to waste their time knowing that odds are they wouldn't be able to stick to the budget and airline restictions easily on OW anyway.

 

[Dave Noble]

I might even consider just ditching DXB altogether and finding the cheapest OW fare I can to EU for this period with stop-overs and BKK and SIN.

Try not to lose site of the fact that a plane is a mode of transport to get you to where you want to be; choose flights based on where you want to go to not the otherway round

Dave

 

[harvyk]

Try not to lose site of the fact that a plane is a mode of transport to get you to where you want to be; choose flights based on where you want to go to not the otherway round

Dave

I do believe there are some on this site who would beg to differ

 

[dajop]

DXB, SIN and BKK in the one itinerary screams EK to me.

Only other way I can vaguely think of doing it staying with oneworld is use separate tickets, with new tickets purchased from your intermediate points.

eg 1 QF to get to SIN return (or into SIN and out of BKK). THen purchase a fare from SIN to DXB on carrier of choice, then DXB to europe on BA. (eg $1000 AUD to SIN, $700 AUD SIN-DXB return, $800AUD DXB-LHR return, SIN-BKK return about $150 ... total about $2650)

 

[fly by wire]

Yes, that is exactly what I was interested in doing..

Tried and the best I could come up with was (all separate return fares):

QF: BNE- HKK 1400 AUD
CX: HKK-DXB 1100 AUD
BA: DXB-LHR 1000 AUD

BNE-BKK-DXB-LHR-DXB-BKK-BNE

~$3500

 

[dajop]

Yes, that is exactly what I was interested in doing..

Tried and the best I could come up with was (all separate return fares):

QF: BNE- HKK 1400 AUD
CX: HKK-DXB 1100 AUD
BA: DXB-LHR 1000 AUD

BNE-BKK-DXB-LHR-DXB-BKK-BNE

~$3500

If it's status credits you're interested in, this may be worthwhile, but if you're doing this solely for the purpose of accruing QFF points, bear in mind that
1) Quite a few discounted CX fares do not earn any points or status credits, and the discounted ones that do only earn at 50% of miles flown
2) Most discounted BA flights between DXB-LHR will only earn at 25% of miles flown.

So in short if it's QF miles your after, best bet is a QF fare with stopovers in SIN and BKK, and then add in a return from Europe to Dubai. Or alternatively forget the miles and use Emirates. Even with EK - you may be better off with a BNE-SIN return coupled with SIN-LHR return and stopover in Dubai.

 

[harvyk]

Of course the other thing you can do is research the flights on the carriers you want, take a printout of all flight (with dates \ times and flight numbers) to a TA and ask them to book it for you. I sometimes do that if there are certain flights I want to be on.