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John Cletheroe's
USA and Canada Holiday Hints |
There are many factors to be considered when booking the flight and car rental.
Therefore the best plan is to start by deciding which area you want to visit. If you will be touring round, then consider all the major cities that you will be passing through or near as possible places to fly in to as the prices of flights and the various components of the car rental can vary very considerably.
Gather as many brochures as possible and compare their prices and small print conditions so as to obtain the best deal. Be sure to obtain brochures from the fly/drive or holiday companies associated with each of the airlines - these usually offer better deals than booking the flights and car separately or the package holiday companies.
Don't ignore the possibility of flying from your local regional UK airport via Amsterdam or Brussels. This can be considerably more convenient and perhaps even less expensive than flying from Heathrow or Gatwick, especially when the cost of transportation to London and any possible overnight accommodation near the airport and long-term car parking is taken into account.
When comparing prices of car rental, check which cost elements are included and which will have to paid in the USA directly to the car rental company. These cost elements include the basic rental, CDW/LDW and sales tax. Additionally you may wish to take out "top-up" insurance either in advance or with the car rental company and as appropriate there may be additional charges payable locally for additional drivers, under-age drivers and infant seat rental.
Also compare travel agents' discounts, which often have conditions attached which make them less attractive than they seem at first. The despicable practice of tour operators and travel agents making special offers for holidays conditional on taking out the company's insurance has now thankfully been made illegal in Britain. According to an announcement made on 19-Dec-97, in the future British travel agent chains will have to state which tour operator they are owned by.
Booking direct with the holiday operator (by phone or email) may in many cases entitle you to a worthwhile discount (typically 10%). It also has the great advantage of by-passing the travel agent, who in Britain is often a source of delays, inefficiencies, mistakes, ineptitude, ignorance, apathy, sharp practice and outright deception.
The following is a personal opinion regarding e-commerce - the purchasing of goods and services via the Internet. Whereas the publicising of information about products and prices via web sites and the ability to order items via email are both extremely valuable, the automation of ordering via e-commerce web sites is in my humble opinion currently a disaster. Most e-commerce web sites are extremely slow and bug-ridden. Almost all e-commerce sites require the customer to enter full details of themselves and the product they are interested in - in effect to very nearly generate an order - before revealing any price information. Many sites demand the entry of a valid two-letter US state code (for example CO for Colorado or UT for Utah) and a US ZIP code (postal code) in customers' conventional addresses, making them impossible to use if you live in another country. Many airline and travel e-commerce sites suffer from these fundamental design errors which will drive away all but the most gullible, patient and persistent customers. More discerning customers will also have very serious concerns about the security of entering their credit card information, about what happens to part-completed transactions when browsers crash and about the competence and honesty of many e-commerce companies. It is extremely difficult to find any meaningful information on how the supposedly secure Internet transaction systems work and what the obscurely worded prompts and questions issued by web browsers regarding security actually mean. Airline flight prices quoted on many e-commerce sites are often far from being competitive. E-commerce in its current form is a bubble which will soon burst.
EMail me Please note that I am not in the airline or car rental business or the travel trade and I cannot provide any more information on airline travel or car rental other than that presented here. Nor can I process any requests for quotations or reservations for air tickets or car rental - these should be directed to airlines, car rental companies or travel agents.
Most recently modified 3-Oct-01