Searching for award availability 

The list goes in order of Delta hub size and therefore, number of flights offered. I recommend starting with the hubs first because you’ll likely have an easier time trying to get from YOUR AIRPORT to DELTA HUB.

The Delta SkyMiles booking process is very much based on trial and errors– the empowering part is knowing which options are best available to try so that you can find the seats you want. For most of these searches, we’ll be using the one-way search to speed up the process. (NOTE: Delta charges the full round-trip price in miles when booking a one-way, so I would never actually book a one-way, I’m just using it for my research. For this example, I’m trying to find flights that are being quoted at 60k miles–the USA to Europe low price). I always start by punching in my desired dates + desired cities and see what it spits out first:

For example:

As I expected, Delta returned a terrible option for this trip:

47 hours AND 115k miles to get from the US to France?! Good try Delta.

Next, click  “View Award Calendar” on the left sidebar to make sure there aren’t any obvious dates available:

The “View Award Calendar” tool is extremely useful when trying to narrow down date availability fast. In this case, I could clearly see my preferred date of March 29 isn’t available at the low-award price but, if I have some flexibility, I could go on March 18 or 19th. This tool can help prevent hours and hours of needless searching.

For some of you (the exceptionally lucky ones), you might be done after this step. You can skip down to “Ticketing the Award” section below. For the majority that is still getting terrible results, we’ll continue in detail.

OK–So, we still need to find space from Charleston, SC (CHS) to Nantes, France (NTE) on March 29 for 60k SkyMiles. With Delta and their broke-ass system, the only way is to painstakingly  search leg-by-leg, segment-by-segment until you find seats available at the low-award price. The best advice for booking flights from North America to Europe is to start by finding the flight that gets you across the Atlantic. Once you find space on a New York-Paris flight, you can then search for Your City-New York and then Paris-Your Final destination. It’s common that the tighter award space will always be the expensive transatlantic flights and not the cheaper domestic/regional ones.

Europe award route maps

I highly recommend you print the following part of the post and use it as a worksheet when searching.

ATLANTA (ATL) to: gcmap.com

Then NEW YORK (JFK) to: gcmap.com

I really would just go down the list, inputting city pairs into the one-way award search until I find something I might be able to make work.

After searching, I found this flight (JFK-AMS) on March 29 in the 60k SkyMiles tier.

Next, because my origin isn’t New York, I need to find a way to get from Charleston (CHS) to JFK. Just fire up the one-way search and start punching in. Note: The magic number here is 25k miles to know that you’ve found low-price award seats.

Ok, I’m hitting a wall:  the best I can price out is for 40k miles from CHS – LGA:

Now, if I have the extra miles, I could decide that I’m satisfied with this option and pay the extra 15k miles it will require to book–bringing the grand total from 60k to 75k–but, determined to book this trip with only 60k miles, I go back to the drawing board and the cycle repeats.

Need help? Drop us a line on Twitter or add a comment to this post–we’d be happy to help!

The post How-to: Use Delta SkyMiles to Book an Award Ticket to Europe: Searching Availability first appeared on Weekend Blitz.

Pros: RailEurope.com is a good resource for researching entire rail network in Europe and is the only place to book a multiday rail pass that covers numerous countries and service providers

Cons: If just booking a simple roundtrip or one-way ticket, it can cost 20-40% more than going direct to the train website

When planning our France trip, we needed to book about 3 train tickets to get us from CDG-Bordeaux, Bordeaux-Nantes and then Nantes-Paris. So, when trying to research the best way to book, we checked out all the venues, starting with RailEurope.com.

We were looking at taking the 11h05 train from Bordeaux to Nantes on March 10th– RailEurope is quoting $70.

Ok, let’s buy it:

Ok, still looking good, coming in at $70.

Ok…now the price has jumped to $72 with no explanation about where the extra $2 came from.

Continuing on to book, I select “issue e-tickets” and see in the fine print that Rail Europe is slipping in a $7.95 booking fee.

Ok, well maybe I’ll just have them mailed:

That’s even worse at $18 for fast shipping. So, now the total has jumped by almost 10% to $79.95:

Booking French train company SNCF direct on Voyages-SNCF.com

Pros: You can see discounted and promo fares

Cons: If you click “English” on Voyages-SNCF.com, it forwards you to RailEurope! Discounted fares might be more restrictive

Head to Voyages-SNCF.com, when prompted select “Other Countries (EUR)” to display in English and ticket collection country as “France” to show you the best prices. If you select either USA or UK as your country, the website will forward you to RailEurope.com! For the exact same train, we’re getting quotes of 37.30 eur (≈ $48.50 US), which is a discounted rate not even available on RailEurope. Now, the discounted rate comes with a more strict exchange policy, so, for the purposes of comparing apples to apples, we’ll use the 49.70 eur rate (≈ $64.70 US) which has identical exchange policies to the Rail Europe ticket.

On to the next screen to book it. I selected “e-ticket” and then proceed to payment. The grand total comes out to 49.70 eur (≈ $64.70 US), no hidden fees or surprises.

This equals a discount of $79.95 – $64.70 = $15.25 saved, nearly 20% off by using Voyages-SNCF.com. And, you’re booking directly with the company, skipping the middleman so, in theory, any changes or refunds should be much easier. If you take into account that the ticket I actually booked was the 37.30 eur ($48.50 US) rate, then the savings were more like $79.95 – $48.50 = $31.45 off, a savings of almost 40%.

BOTTOM LINE: The more sites you check, the better for shopping train and airline tickets, but, in this case, it nearly always pays to shop directly with the issuing authority.

The post How-to: Booking French Trains (RailEurope vs SNCF) first appeared on Weekend Blitz.

My (great) experience 

I had a reservation at a Sheraton property that I made many weeks ago at the Fed/Gov’t rate. On the morning of my check-in date, I received a call from the hotel manager explaining that they were overbooked for the night and were starting by calling all SPG Platinum/Gold members to see if they would be willing to accept Starpoints for having their reservation cancelled. He said that they’re offering 7,000 Starpoints for volunteers (this is equal to 1 free night at the property)–I paused and thought about my travel plans:  they were, in fact, flexible and I didn’t have to stay at that particular property.  Suspecting that they could go higher, I told him that if he could do 10,000 Starpoints, then I’d be willing to accept the cancellation. He said no problem, thanked me for my flexibility and told me to look out for the points in my account within 2 days.

As promised, 10k points were posted to my account!

I was able to rebook at another Sheraton just a few miles away for the same Fed/Gov’t rate of $91, so it was as if I’d just received 10k Starpoints for free, with little to no inconvenience.

If it is truly Starwood’s policy to start by calling SPG Platinum members, then I imagine I was one of the very first on the list because I would assume their next step was to start calling those that booked at the cheapest rate first. I booked my room for $91 and their standard flexible rates are around $229 (but can go for as high as $400) so it makes perfect sense to try to bump me and then rebook my room for $400. If I had insisted on staying, they would have been getting $91 in revenue and would likely have to book me at a neighboring property for a much higher price.

How does a hotel become “overbooked”

1. The most common scenario is that hotel purposely, similar to airlines, will sell more rooms than they actually have expecting that a certain percentage of those bookings will cancel on their own. The hotel’s goal is to be at 100% capacity every night so it can make good business sense to book 110% of your available rooms as long as they have made a calculated estimate that 10% might might cancel.

2. When hotels are working with third parties like Expedia or Travelocity, overbookings can be more common. Technically, based on the agreement through each third party, hotels are supposed to “set aside” a certain amount of rooms for these websites to use. However, when the property is making bookings using their own reservation systems, it is possible that an Expedia reservation could come in after the hotel is already at capacity — but the hotel will be required to honor these reservations either way.

3. Elites within hotel loyalty programs likely also add to the overbooking problem. Starwood Platinum, Marriott Platinum, Hyatt Diamond etc… all have benefits that will guarantee room availability within 48-72 hours of check-in. Also, you can imagine, the only time you’d need to exercise your privilege/right/benefit to your guaranteed room availability is in periods of high demand (and the way they’re coming up with that room is by bumping someone else).

How an overbooking is handled

– Don’t worry, you’ll have a room.

Most states have laws requiring accommodations to be provided at an alternate hotel, of equal or greater value–this is commonly referred to as a “walk” in hotel terminology. In the event that a hotel is overbooked resulting in no rooms remaining available, hotel management will often “walk” the customer to a neighboring hotel. The good news is that this practice is more common than you might realize and hotels often maintain partnerships or agreements with neighboring and even competing hotels so that each may send their overflow guests at a predetermined rate in the event of an overbooking.

– Who stays and who goes?

Some hotel chains have specific company policies which determine which customers will be walked in order of priority:  often, customers who belong to the highest tier level of the hotel’s loyalty program will likely not be forced to walk (in my case, they basically paid me off, had I declined I would have had a better shot at staying at the original property, not forced to walk to a neighboring one) or would be the last to be walked in an extreme situation. Customers with third-party reservations that were not made directly with the hotel or first-time customers with a discounted rate may be at a higher risk of being walked.

– Will this cost me anything?

Since you’re protected by law in most states, if you’re bumped, you’ll pay the hotel you booked with directly and they will handle compensation the other property. In some cases, you might have booked at a discounted rate many weeks or months ago and you will have to be bumped to a much nicer property and the original hotel will be stuck eating the additional cost. If anything, some loyalty programs will even give their elite members something extra (either $, points or free night vouchers) just for the inconvenience of having to walk.

BOTTOM LINE: If you’re invited to be a volunteer to cancel when a hotel is overbooked, understand the hotel’s costs and make sure you’re being fairly compensated. And if they walk you, ask for some type of compensation too. Don’t forget–their first offer is never their best offer.

The post How-to: Benefit from an Overbooked Hotel first appeared on Weekend Blitz.