Duty free is usually very average unless your buying cigarettes or items from that local area. For e

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What I learned from the piece is that when Time links to your blog, lots of other mirror sites pull their content and link to your blog as well, sending you trackback pings which are essentially spam that you need to clean up. Hah.
(This wasn t my first time quoted in Time , for instance over the summer they included me on inflight baymont inn north kansas city reading styles explaining why I still travel with a physical book and not just an e-reader. But it was strangely the first time they linked to me that I can recall.)
The first myth they cover is when to book your ticket, and the correct time is not as soon as possible . To me booking too early is a mistake entirely apart from price, you don t want to book when it s reasonable likely that plans change and you ll incur change fees.
The advice in the piece is to book 6 to 7 weeks out, my own mental model is that for peak holiday travel 90 days is closer to right since the cheap fare buckets will tend to sell out early since vacationers tend to book farther in advance.
This holds true if you're booking an awards ticket, says Gary Leff, who blogs at "View From the Wing." baymont inn north kansas city Airlines don't open award seats at the same time… This varies not just by airline but also by route and even day of week," he points out. If you want to cash in those miles, shoot for six to nine months out, and run some test searches a few weeks beforehand, he suggests. "Often times the patterns remain the same because far in advance baymont inn north kansas city airlines are usually working off a fairly generic playbook based on historical data."
You need the extra insurance on your car rental . Generally your own car insurance covers you in a rental, and premium credit cards will come with coverage that can pay collision costs not covered by your own policy. I use Diners Club, because its collision coverage is primary, meaning rental car dings don t even have to get reported to my insurance company. (United Explorer s coverage is primary as well.) And I rent from major agencies baymont inn north kansas city at airport locations baymont inn north kansas city which tend to be less persnickety baymont inn north kansas city about little scrapes.
You'll get a better exchange rate overseas by paying in dollars. Wow, never actually heard this one, although there are some places where dollars are a preferred currency, certainly in Vietnam folks will want to take your dollars and give you change at the official exchange rate. Don t exchange money at booths in the airport in the U.S. at least, your best bet will be to pay with credit cards that incur no foreign currency transaction fees and to take cash out of an ATM (since you ll get close to the interbank rate) using an account that doesn t surcharge foreign currency as well.
Airfare prices are lowest late Tuesday night. I ve never bought this one. There are certainly more updates to pricing baymont inn north kansas city during the day in the midst of the week, the best fares last only a few hours, you re not really going to do the best by timing your searches to a particular day or staying up late at night.
The best hotel deals come from third-party sites. Often the best prices can be found elsewhere, you can do even better by using a hotel chain s best rate guarantee, some properties though can be booked cheaply through third parties (especially international resorts) and some properties can be booked with better benefits through third parties (such as Virtuoso or American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts where you ll get breakfast, upgrades, late checkout, and room credits at a similar room rate as booking directly). So it s not entirely a myth, and the mere existence baymont inn north kansas city of best rate guarantees doesn t actually mean that hotel chains offer the best rates on their own websites. But you don t want to book through third party online travel agents usually if you want elite stay credit, and with some chains even recognition of elite status benefits.
I think most of those myths have/had baymont inn north kansas city a grain of truth, but saying it always/never applies would be wrong. In general, I would book airline tickets paid with cash ASAP, since generally prices go up in time. Of course, if your flexible, spontaneous, and happen to be near a computer when a deal posts, you can definitely score some great deals.
I was a National Executive Elite for many years until I was dinged for $3000 worth of damage that I was not responsible for at their DEN location. I eventually had the charges cleared but it took many months and a threat of legal action baymont inn north kansas city before I was clear. I won t get into detail here but they used questionable techniques to try to secure payment from me.
To clarify about paying in dollars, even using a credit card with no foreign transaction fee, a merchant may give you a choice whether the charge is computed in dollars or local currency. My understanding is that the local currency option is the better one as conversion to dollars entails baymont inn north kansas city extra cost due to exchange rate and/or fees. Certainly on a recent baymont inn north kansas city trip to Beijing the hotel originally charged me in us dollars. When I said I preferred RMB, the original was voided. baymont inn north kansas city Comparing the charge in dollars on the voided receipt with the final charge on my credit card statement there was about a 3% difference.
Seriously, the idea that there s some sort of magic time to buy airline tickets is pretty much insane. I know I ve been watching airline fares for more than 20 years and I ve never been able to detect a pricing baymont inn north kansas city pattern based on a day of the week. I assume pricing departments are less likely to be fully staffed on weekends, so perhaps that s a less likely time for a new sale to pop up. Of course, this can sometimes work to your advantage on the weekends (more so with foreign airlines) when a mistake fare is loaded on Friday and lasts until Monday.
Been pricing up car rental prices baymont inn north kansas city lately and notice Sunday nights were cheaper than Mondays. It has happened the past 4 weeks so surely this can t be a fluke. Inmregqrds to airfare .we might not be able to tell which day of the week but I surely know which airlines comes out with sales. Few of them have them same time every year. BA, SAS, etc.. which we base buying our vacation tickets around.
Duty free is usually very average unless your buying cigarettes or items from that local area. For example electronics in Europe at the airport baymont inn north kansas city duty free shop aren t cheap compared to the prices in the USA. On a recent trip to Europe I noticed that the cheapest place to buy duty free cigs was on the MSC cruise ship at $25 per carton, the airports ran about $35 or so and the cruise port duty free shops ran about $37 but everything else was more expensive on the cruise ship than at other duty free shops. You have to know your prices. We did have great luck with global blue in getting our vat taxes refunded for purchases in France by the way. Complicated but well worth the trouble if you do much shopping.
I pass through Duty Free stores at several Central American airports on my flts back to MIA. IMO the prices reflect little baymont inn north kansas city or no savings .however, I have noticed the Duty Free wine shop in GUA occasionally baymont inn north kansas city has sales and the prices are actually deeply discounted on their higher end offerings.
In my past experience taking my family to London I looked daily at the prices for United and suddenly fell into a sale that was over 25% cheaper than earlier in the day. It was a Wednesday and in the evening. Later that evening the prices were back to normal. Praise the Lord for the sale!
Sometimes the in-flight duty free purchases are actually a good deal. I bought a liter of JW Black on Singapore airlines for about $28. Certainly cheaper than anything I ve ever seen in duty free or in NYC discount liquor stores. Only the liquor and tobacco are worth looking at in duty free, and you need to know your prices. Seriously, how much is duty on chocolates or all the other crap they sell in duty free? The markup will be a lot higher than any sales tax.
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