[David]

Is it just me, or are other regular travellers finding booking flights and all the other parts of a travel trip confusing, wastes a lot of time, and not a joy doing this frequently?

I normally do the following:

1. Book your flight, compare prices, times, different airlines terms, regarding flexibility, luggage restraints, busy flights, connecting airports
2. Book your car park space
3. Book priority security lane, unless my ticket already has it, but I’m finding most times priority security lane is no longer included in most tickets and needs to be bought separate.
4. Book your returning airport priority security lane.
5. Some busy airports, require you to book in advance airport lounge (no1 lounges, requires this, even if you have a priority pass)
6. Book your car rental, knowing in advance city low emission zones, congested areas, non safe areas, especially late night or early morning flight arrivals, car hire closing hours in some cities.
7. Meals are very important to me whilst allowing me to try and stay safe and healthy whilst travelling, but I find planning where to get healthy meals not easy, most airlines don’t provide healthy or adequate meals, when they do provide food, but more choice in airports, and some airport lounges provide reasonably good healthy food, but takes planning and a lot of remembering which lounges provide the best healthy food.

One time, I could do all this in one booking, some parts, I still can, but can’t trust the airline or travel companies to give me the best possible deal, especially with car hire, and often find it cheaper paying through car hire companies separate.

The other thing that is not right, even being on a frequent traveller of a travel company, I still find it cheaper to pay for a product, such as car hire, without logging in to make a booking, however the savings from doing all this research mounts up, but off setting this savings against my own time, I’m not sure if it’s worth it?

Is it me, or am I doing something wrong, should booking your travel be this complicated, and I’m an experienced traveller, I really do feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t know the general booking procedures?

David

[Defcon5]

Interesting that you work for a travel company and you have all of these challenges. Do you have a staff travel team that can sort this for you? Or a good TMC?

[MartynSinclair]

Its all necessary and unsurprising based on the complexity, options, timings, routings and in my case, ex-Europe starting points for longhaul. With prices varying so extensively, to get the correct kind of ticket and add on’s will take time.

More and more purchases now need time consuming research to ensure the end product and price suit the buyer.

[LuganoPirate]

I rarely go through that sort of hassle. My bookings including car hire and hotels are all straightforward. Even open jaw and multi city bookings are easy enough when I use Swiss or Lufthansa.

My only bugbear is the need to make a dummy booking in order to see flight times and credit card denials even when all is OK with the card.

[Cloud-9]

All I do is:
Compare prices times airlines;

Book the flight;

Book a hotel.

Occasionlly book airport parking and – even more rately – book a hire car.

I have never booked security or lounges

[Author]

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