I would like to get a few suggestions on booking flights and making reservations. Planning our trip for mid September. Do most of you book everything yourselves or do you use sites like Expedia, Travelocity, etc. What do you suggest?
Jennifer
If you have a smart phone, I suggest the free app "ITA" It is a search engine that allows you to find the lowest price, the best itinerary, the best flight schedule, type of airliner (if you want to avoid the cattle car 3-isle-3 configuration) over a 30 day time period. You simply put in the departure and arrival city, the number of days of travel, and then select the 30 day time frame, and you will get a graph with a price for every day departure in that 30 day window. Select the day you want to depart, then it will come up with numerous airlines, and possible schedules both for the outbound and inbound legs. It is suppose to be able to do open jaw, but have never been able to make that work. In that case I use 2 separate searches one way( PDX-Dub, then SNN-PDX) It starts out with the lowest cost option, then proceeds down the page with more options at higher prices. Sometimes I choose to spend a few more dollars to get a better lay-over schedule, esp if they are really short, or extremely long, Hopefully you are able to get a non-stop from your departure city. You find the schedule, the price, and the airline you like, write down the flight numbers for all the legs, then call the airline and book directly with them. ITA does not provide links to the airlines like Kayak etc does. The airline websight shoud give you a price that matched what you saw on ITA. It covers most major airlines. This App should be available on most tablets (I can get it on my mini ipad) and probably available on a PC although I have not tried that. Like Tony says about getting a rental car...avoid the middle man, and go direct to the source. If anything goes haywire, (weather, trip interruption etc) it is much easier to deal with the airline direct rather than a consolidator.
Some have gotten good deals on Expedia, Travelocity, etc. One time we used one of these types of sites, couldn't get our tickets to print the night before, and the airline didn't have a record of us having a ticket! It was too late in the evening to get ahold of the consolidator, so we were on the cell phone with them at 8AM on the way to the airport for a 11AM flight! to get a schedule change confirmation to go thru that we thought we had done by computer weeks earlier. We were really scared, but were lucky to get it resolved shortly before arriving at the airport. I will not risk that again. Another consideration: a European based airline will furnish rooms and meals if there is a weather/volcano delay when leaving Europe. We got a bonus 3 days in Dublin, most expenses paid compliments of Aer Lingus when the hurricane hit the east coast about 1 1/2 years ago!
Do Not use those sites for Car Hire prices. They short sell to give you a fantastic price because only the basic hire price and not the additional insurances and other fee's.. Car Hire in Ireland is a minefield if you are unprepared for these extra bits which are left out from many quotes.
__________________
Two rules for Ireland, Take your time & bring a sense of humour
