Flight arrangements for tours

In response to a subscriber’s request, readers who take tours wrote in saying whether they prefer making their own flight arrangements for tours or having the tour company book the flights. We wanted to know, in either case, what the advantages and disadvantages are regarding convenience and cost plus how much trouble it was when something went wrong. We asked that, with any example, the writer name the tour or cruise company involved, the month and year of the trip and from where to where the flights went.

Responses were printed in the December 2008 issue, which prompted more replies, as shown below. Have something to add? Write to Flight Arrangements for Tours, c/o ITN, 2116 28th St., Sacramento, CA 95818, or e-mail editor@intl travelnews.com (include the address at which you receive ITN). ITN prints no items on destinations in North America or the Caribbean.

In the past 13 years I have made approximately 35 international trips. Whenever possible, I always make my own flight arrangements with one certain consolidator or one specific company that specializes in international air travel.

First, I always check several Internet sites to see what is available and the prices asked. I usually am able to better the prices offered by most Internet sites (Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, etc.). In addition, I usually am able to get at least two alternative itineraries plus superior routing and scheduling with major airlines.

On flights in 2008 from Los Angeles to Sana’a, Yemen; Tirana, Albania, and Kathmandu, Nepal, not only did I receive better prices than fellow travelers with my same point of origin, but in all cases I received better scheduling (routing/delays/timing). In one case, I received a free business-class upgrade from Narita to Singapore.

Tour companies’ routings with multiple flight legs can lead to late arrivals and long delays plus more opportunities for baggage to be lost. Consequently, with respect to routing, layovers and options available, not to mention cost itself, I am pleased with my decision to make my own flight arrangements for tours.

Ed Lifset

Oceanside, CA

I have usually made my own arrangements unless they were included in the price of a tour, and if I wanted to pick up a tour from the East Coast I would make my own plans from the West Coast, thus having some extra time for other activities.

The one exception so far was a trip I made with ElderTreks (Toronto, Ont.; 800/741-7956, www.eldertreks.com), which offered four different schedules on different airlines and allowed me to make a 3-day layover in London on the way to Pakistan.

Sue LaCabe

Goleta, CA

ElderTreks includes transfers even if you make your own airline reservations.

Ellen Jacobson

Centennial, CO

I’m delighted that ITN has run a series on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of booking one’s own flight arrangements. I would like to comment on the same subject but where cruises are involved.

I agree with reader Rhonda J. Kutler, who professed to be more concerned when the connection between flights is too tight. I will let the cruise company make my flight arrangements but not until I question them about the layover times and which carrier they will be using. If the answers are reassuring, they are in charge.

The one exception is Princess Cruises (Santa Clarita, CA; 800/774-6237, www.princess.com). In 2001 we were scheduled to begin a cruise in Santiago, Chile, and while booking the cruise I asked that we leave Salt Lake City early in the day to catch our connecting Continental flight in Dallas. Princess agents said they could “customize” our itinerary for an additional charge, otherwise we would get what they booked.

When the tour schedule arrived, it showed we had just 45 minutes to make the Continental flight. A call to Delta revealed that an earlier flight was available and for $50 per ticket we could change. Further conversation brought the info that the earlier flight was almost empty and that if we were willing to “stand by” for it, there would be no charge. We did so and got to Dallas with a 4-hour layover.

We checked in with Continental and noted that at 45 minutes before flight time the boarding area was quite empty. However, as the first call for boarding the plane was issued a veritable horde of travelers suddenly inundated the gate counter.

It turned out that Continental had overbooked by 20 seats. When they finally closed the door, the gate agent was up to $800 for anyone who would give up his seat, and there were no takers. We next saw these “cruisers” three days later embarking at Puerto Madryn.

This was not the only time we’ve had a problem because of Princess’ tight connection policy, so with Princess I book my own air and then purchase Princess’ airport-to-ship transfer services.

Be aware that the Princess ships sail as scheduled even though their travel office is responsible for the flight arrangements that didn’t get you there in time!

John A. Davison

Sandy, UT

My wife, Kathleen, and I travel frequently and have purchased tours with air and without air. Advantages of buying a tour including the airfare are 1) it is occasionally cheaper overall, 2) it usually includes airport transfers, which is more convenient than making your own arrangements, plus the transfers are cheaper where airports are farther out from the city, and 3) if the tour company cancels the tour on you or changes the itinerary, they will take care of necessary airline charges and changes.

Disadvantages are 1) routing is almost never as good as you can do on your own, 2) some tours have excessive charges if you want to arrive earlier or return later than the tour, 3) you often can get cheaper fares yourself and 4) you can’t choose which airline to fly — a major consideration these days when almost all non-US carriers offer vastly superior service.

A final note — the letter from the Grand Circle Corporation’s Public Relations Director published in the December 2008 issue indicates that 24-hour airport assistance is available. This might lead one to believe that if you have troubles en route, there is someone to help you. There isn’t. Grand Circle’s website indicates that you have to deal with the air carrier yourself.

On a February ’07 Portugal and Spain tour that included air, our flight was delayed for a day. Grand Circle could not be reached outside of business hours. Calls to Grand Circle were answered by a service that could do nothing to help. They were only interested in knowing when our new flight would arrive so that they could cancel our hotel reservation and arrange our new transfer time.

Our flight had been booked in two segments, meaning that we had to contact each airline to change reservations, which made it tricky to coordinate. I have learned never to accept segmented flight reservations. One of the airlines wasn’t open on weekends.

Grand Circle Travel tours are great values and wonderful experiences. Their way of dealing with flights is no different than the ways of other companies, however. If you expect to be taken care of when your flights are delayed or canceled, think again. You are on your own whether you book your own air or include it in your package.

Thomas Fletemeyer

Madison, WI

My traveling companion and I have traveled with many tour companies, but our favorites, for the tours themselves, are Grand Circle Travel (Boston, MA; 800/248-3737), Overseas Adventure Travel (Cambridge, MA; 800/493-6824, www.oattravel.com) and Odysseys Unlimited (Watertown, MA; 888/370-6765, www.odysseys-unlimited.com). We will travel with MIR Corporation (Seattle, WA; 800/424-7289, www.mircorp.com) in summer 2009 for the first time.

I agree that Grand Circle and OAT provide excellent tours, but their travel arrangements drive me crazy. Odysseys Unlimited will at least work with you to get your input when booking, as will MIR Corp., which normally does not include flight arrangements but will take care of them if requested to.

We live in Lincoln, Nebraska, from where we always have to take one or two flights to a gateway, and since Lincoln (and/or Omaha) is not a major market, very often flights are canceled or delayed.

Sometimes, in frustration, I have booked our own domestic arrangements. The downside of that is if something goes wrong and we miss the overseas flight, we are on our own. Also, if a tour company changes the date of the tour by even one day (which Grand Circle and OAT are prone to do) and your domestic flights are already booked, you owe a whopping change fee.

Incidentally, because of our ages (mid-70s), we always buy the insurance; still, getting reimbursed is sometimes a nightmare.

The advantage of booking the entire flight through the tour company is that when something goes wrong, they have to fix it. However, sometimes the fix is not very convenient, and lately they have been telling us to fix it ourselves first and then let them know.

On our GCT Norwegian fjords and Lapland tour in June ’08, when our flight from Omaha to Chicago was three hours late and we missed our connection to Helsinki via New York, the next flight to New York was full; a kind gate agent finally got us to Helsinki via Manchester, England.

I called Grand Circle and told them of the new arrangements and they said they would reimburse us for cab fare to the hotel. It turned out that we had to apply to the insurance company, and the documentation we had to provide was a nightmare. The whole process took a couple of months after we returned.

At least GCT/OAT has begun letting you talk directly to the air department, which did not used to be the case. Not that it always helps. After we booked a Morocco tour for January ’09, they changed our air itinerary three times. The last change left us only 50 minutes to make a connection in Minneapolis for the plane to New York’s JFK.

I was aware that the airline-given connection time was 35 minutes, but since commuter planes come in at one end of the A concourse, if the gate for the plane to JFK were very far away and our flight from Lincoln were at all delayed, we would have missed the flight and therefore missed the flight to Morocco, of which there was only one a day. I called OAT and begged them to put us on an earlier flight to Minneapolis and was told that they could do that for $200 extra! That is obscene.

As it turned out, we got to the counter in the nick of time, though we practically had to run to the gate. We made it, but our luggage did not, and when we learned this upon arrival in Casablanca we also learned that since the tour was immediately going to Rabat, which does not have an airport, our bags had to be sent on to Fes, three days hence. In Fes, we had to take a taxi to the airport at night at our own expense (reimbursable by applying for the insurance) to retrieve it.

Before letting a tour company book all our flight arrangements, I go online and get possible schedules so that when I talk to the company I will be aware of alternatives. I also am aware of the problem of contracts with the airlines, restricting the flight and seating options.

Nancy E. Whitman

Lincoln, NE

For our Overseas Adventure Travel tour to Machu Picchu and the Galápagos in September ’08 ($3,549 per person, including air out of Miami), we decided to make our own air arrangements from Portland, Oregon, to the tour’s starting point in Miami. By doing so, we felt we would be able to control our schedule and save money (as our airfare from Portland was less than OAT’s charge from our nearest gateways).

We realized we’d probably have a night’s hotel stay in Miami departing and returning (thus negating airfare savings) but felt setting our own schedule would be worth it.

To lock in airfare, we booked our Portland-to-Miami return flights before we got our OAT airline itinerary. (In hindsight, this was not a good idea). We used the OAT published tour itinerary to guide our selection of flights to and from Portland. This itinerary stated passengers would depart Miami “late evening September 2nd,” arriving in Lima the morning of Sept. 3 and departing Quito (for return to Miami) sometime on the 19th. OAT staff stated our return flight would arrive in Miami the morning of Sept. 20.

To make sure we didn’t miss the late-evening departure, we wanted to fly to Miami on Sept. 1. And since we didn’t know what time we would be landing in Miami on the morning of the 20th, we decided to return to Portland the 21st, thus we’d have two nights (the 1st and the 20th) in Miami.

We ended up booking flights departing Portland Aug. 31 (necessary to get the cheaper fare) and returning Sept. 21. Now we were looking at three nights in a hotel — certainly not cost-effective, but we were hoping the convenience of having our own schedule would be worth it.

Then we received our itinerary from OAT. Our late-evening Sept. 2 departure turned out to be an early morning (1:45 a.m.) departure the next day, Sept. 3 — so after checking out from our 2-night stay, we spent the afternoon and evening waiting for our flight to leave early the next morning.

Also, the OAT itinerary showed that the return flight — to arrive “the morning of the 20th” (which we mistakenly assumed meant around 8 or 9 a.m.) — would indeed arrive in the morning but at 12:25 a.m. Since we didn’t want to spend the night in the airport, we needed a guaranteed room for the 19th as well, hence two nights in Miami on our return.

The trip was billed as an “18-day small ship adventure,” Sept. 3-20, but OAT identified our group’s departure and return dates as Sept. 2 and Sept. 19 (since most of our group traveled on those dates).

In the final accounting, we did get to set our own schedule. We also got to spend way more time (and money) in Miami than we initially thought. And we found out that fellow West Coast travelers (who booked all their flights through OAT gateway cities) had reasonable flights and connection times and arrived in Lima the evening before we did!

Lessons learned. . .

If you are going to book independent air arrangements, wait until you have at least a draft itinerary for the main trip. (Duh!)

Realize that in brochure itineraries, “late evening” may mean early the next morning and “early morning” may mean middle of the night.

In most cases, it’s probably cheaper (and more efficient) to let your tour operator make all your flight arrangements.

Vicky Woods

Richland, WA

In the “Flight Arrangements for Tours” letters, I was particularly interested in the comments concerning Overseas Adventure Travel. My husband and I have taken seven trips with OAT, the last being to Southeast Asia in November-December ’08. OAT always makes our flight arrangements, and I’d like to tell you how we deal with the two major complaints that were brought up by these letter writers.

SEAT ASSIGNMENTS — As soon as OAT posts our preliminary flight schedule, I phone them to get the booking code that they’ve used with the airline involved. Often, they will e-mail me our real-time reservation.

Once I have that, I advise OAT’s air department that we will do our own seat assignments. I ask them to note in our record that they are NOT to change our seat assignments.

Then I go online (if possible), search for my record and choose my own seats. This is very easy, for instance, with United Airlines bookings.

Then, approximately once a month, I double-check online to see that there have been no changes. One fair warning — during this process, our OAT record on their website occasionally will show the wrong/old seat assignments. I just ignore that, knowing that they’ll be correct when we get our documents.

TRAVEL ROUTING — Once you have traveled with OAT three times and are Inner Circle members, you have the option to request your own desired itinerary.

In January of 2008 we went to Chile with OAT. We live in California, and their initial air schedule for us had us connecting in St. Louis, with a 40-minute connecting time, and then Miami before flying to Santiago. That was absolutely unacceptable to us, especially in January.

I checked online and discovered that there was a great connection from San Francisco to Dallas/Ft. Worth and then on to Santiago. It cost us $100 extra but was totally worth the expense.

Even if you are not Inner Circle members, if a routing looks insane, phone the air department and complain. It has worked for other people.

We like being met at our arrival airport and having transfers for our return flight. We like knowing that OAT will take care of the flight changes in case they change our departure date (which they have done twice) or cancel an extension (that happened once). Just knowing how to get around the group booking irritations really helps.

Diana Butler

El Sobrante CA

ITN sent copies of the above letters to Grand Circle Corporation, parent company of Grand Circle Travel and Overseas Adventure Travel (347 Congress St., Boston, MA 02210), and received the following reply.

Thank you for the opportunity to add to the discussion around airlines and bookings. We’ve heard loud and clear that travelers want choice when they travel, and we are pleased to have made enhancements to better accommodate them.

Today, we present a traveler with three air itinerary options at time of booking. These include the air itinerary that is included in the cost of the trip plus two other options for an additional cost. While the majority of travelers choose the included air itinerary, many want specific routes and schedules and are willing to pay more to get them.

In addition, we now provide travelers with access to their trip information through the “My Account” section of our website. Travelers may access their air itineraries there and add, change or update their air seating requests.

One of the above readers recommended working directly with the airline, and that’s a good idea. However, readers should be sure to inform their tour operator about any seat assignments, since tour operators and airlines do not always share the same reservation system.

Readers should be aware that the decisions around seat assignments lie with the airlines, which have a limited number of the window and aisle seats that travelers most request.

Finally, regarding our 24-hour assistance referenced by one of the readers, we did not mean to mislead. Our printed pretrip materials and website clearly state that travelers who need to rebook due to a missed flight should do so directly with the airline and communicate the new itinerary to us so that we can alert our overseas colleagues, who will provide any necessary assistance upon arrival. This service is available 24/7.

Marge Coughlin, Director,

Air Ops, Grand Circle Travel

and Overseas Adventure Travel