Dealing with the busy travel season – booking

As we approach many holidays and festivities, many of us are hitting the road to travel to spend time with family and loved ones. Over the next few weeks VIP Upgrades will being you a guide to this season and the steps you should take for everything to go smoothly. This week, we’re looking at the booking process for flights. If you are going further afield, and you will need to fly to reach your destination but haven’t yet booked your ticket; do it now. Airline seats are filling up quickly and the best time to buy travel for many of the upcoming holidays is already upon us. The sooner you book, the better.

There are many theories about when and how to book a ticket to get the best price. If you just do an internet search you’ll see everything from midnight on a Tuesday, to doing your searching on one computer with one internet connection, but booking on another because the more you search on one computer the more likely the price will go up. These are no more than baseless theories because as the public, we don’t know what goes on in the realm of airline ticket pricing.

Suffice it to say, there can be cost advantages to booking early, but there are also other advantages that you can take into consideration. When travelling alone, we have our seating preferences on the plane (window/aisle/over the wing/forward/aft) but there’s still some flexibility. When travelling with your family however, you’re not just looking for one seat, but you are looking for multiple. Booking early gives you the most selection and flexibility.

Another advantage to booking early is a choice of times. Where there are multiple flights a day, or if there are different ways to connect to get to your destination you want to travel in the most convenient way you can. Leave booking too late, and you may end up having to get up at 4am, only to wait 6 hours at LaGuardia to get to where you need to go. Booking early means more availability of flights.

These are just a few of the advantages and things to look out for when booking flights. We’re sure there are many more. Tell us what you think: concierge@vipupgrades.com.