Making A Great Trip

OK, so how much is all of this going to run you? I should have started with that question long ago, since that’s the first question that you should ask: what has it cost you, what have you won? When I go to Europe I start with an estimate of $10,000. $1,000/person for airline tickets, $4,000; $200/night for 10 nights, $2,000; $100/day for a decent rental vehicle with car seats, $1,000 – That’s $7,000 already. Call it $300/day for the actual fun stuff – dining, tickets, purchases. $10,000.

Yep, that’s why I don’t go every year, or even every other year. I don’t have $1,000 in my monthly budget to set aside to save for a trip, which is what you should do. Your tax refund won’t cover that either, not by a long shot. But you should try to set aside $400/month in a fund, over two years that will get you there. Or, if you’re lucky enough to get a bonus, make that the kitty.

After that, you’re going to have to try to shave costs where you can. I put in $1,000/ticket, but shoot for $800. You can rent a vacation apartment for $1,000 for a week, plus a few extra nights, call it $1,500. Cut down on the number of driving days: $600. Go off season and save another 15%. Depending on where you make your compromises, you can still have a great time at $7,000. Below that and you’re risking your trip. But $300/month over two years will get you to that $7,000. Reachable.

You want to go for less? I briefly discussed travel agencies and packages. On the former – they can be great resources, true, if you have a good agent. They’ll certainly save you money if you don’t want to do any of the legwork I’ve outlined, but you won’t be going on the cheap. On Packages and Tour Operators…I firmly believe you get what you pay for, here. If that room is being discounted heavily, it *may* be because of volume through the operator. Or, it may be because that hotel has trouble getting repeat business. I’ve purchased through a package operator once: it was indeed a low price (though I can’t recall what it was). Covered flight (NYC-Paris) and a three star hotel in a convenient neighborhood. Caveats: you had to fly out of NYC, so factor in the cost to get there (I’ll guarantee you no tour operator runs packages out of Birmingham, and no, as much as I like putting these trips together, there’s not enough local volume to make it a viable business). The flight was Wed-Wed – it’s a small thing, maybe, but I hate losing the extra weekend. Ideally, you fly Fri-Sun combos, right, to max the weekends – fit in 9 days while only taking 5 off. It makes a difference. As to the hotel...it may have qualified as a three star, but it was pretty shabby, and the mattress was far from comfortable. To be fair, I’ve had that issue with other three star hotels, especially in France. This was in the days before TripAdvisor, so perhaps now you can do better vetting of package hotels before purchasing. More likely you’ll be able to AirBnB your way into a better spot. And I won’t even get into the group tours, nope, not waiting around for other people to get on the darn tour bus so we can go to the net spot.

So – count on $10,000, you’ll have a great time if you can swing it. Go off-season, if you must, and you can compromise on dining out – eat large breakfasts at the hotel (usually included) and make sandwiches for lunch. But *don’t* spend $4,000 on a cheapie trip and walk away from it remembering only the bad food and rotten hotel. In that regard, a trip is a lot like a wedding: horribly expensive, and not necessarily worth it. You get good memories and photos, mostly. But if you cheapen up on a few key things (e.g., cash bar) you leave with the wrong memories.

I find lodging secondary to flight & destination. And so I tend to book lodging until after I've chosen my flights. Usually, the flight will be the largest expense line item on your trip, so you have to be extra careful when shopping. With hotels, you have more to choose from, and more options, so you can often wait until much further down the road and still get a good deal.

Often, but not nearly always, I'm afraid, and I'll get into those situations where you *must* look well in advance. First, a few general thoughts. With lodging, you have many more choices than airlines. Airlines will try to differentiate between each other on service, but for the most part, a seat on Delta is the same as a seat on Lufthansa. And within the airplane itself, there's virtually no difference in coach seating outside of aisle/window preference. Customers know this, so airlines are forced to play their very competitive pricing games.

Hotels have some of these features, and when possible, it's best to take advantage of them. Chains impose standards of style and quality that often make a room at a Sheraton indistinguishable from a room at a Hilton. If you are traveling to a location that has one or several chains in the target area, use the tools of the internet to get you your best price.

There are dozens of tools; the ones I tend to use are Trivago, Hotels.com, Booking.com, Hotwire.com, and Priceline.com. Let's talk about the first three -- the aggregators, which includes Travelocity and Expedia, and others. It's pretty simple, they buy bulk rooms and resell to you at a discount. Chains especially use these to fill huge quantity, and it works out for them. Indeed, there's a perception that if you book through an aggregator, you'll get the worst room in the place, but that's not true. If you don't like your room you booked through Travelocity, tell the hotel staff you're going to call Travelocity right away: Travelocity has more pull than you do in this matter. So, don't fight it, use the aggregators: but, beware, if you're traveling with kids, you'll face special issues.

That is: You have to make sure you book the right room. I need a room for two adults and two kids. Usually I can get by with booking a plain double and being a bit cramped, especially if it's just a couple of days -- I don't really need the junior suite. So my searches will often just be for a double. If you search for two adults and two kids, you'll be limited to the aforementioned suites, and that will cost you.

Now, in the US, it's almost never a problem to show up with a reservation for a double, and ask for an extra kid's bed; many US rooms come with fold out sofas anyway. US hotels don't much care, they're renting out a room, and the price is attached to the room, not the occupants.

This is *not* the same in Europe. There, it's fairly common to charge per person, not per room. A room with a double bed may be rented out for 100 Euros single occupancy, 150 Euros double occupancy: same room, different price. Thus: if you book a plain double room, and show up with two kids...well, you're out of contract. They can cancel the reservation or upcharge you a bunch, and you'll have a lot less pull with the aggregator since you were trying to game the system. Worst case is that they can refuse the room stay, and you're out on your ear. It happens.

That doesn't mean you can't use the aggregators, but just be careful. If you book the double, and have to add kids, call the aggregator before you arrive, hopefully well before. See if they can make the arrangements: better to have it completed than have to worry about it on the spot.

Now, I find dealing with aggregators in this fashion to be annoying -- you're having to shuttle your specific request through them to the hotel, and you don't really know what's going on there. Therefore I prefer to use the aggregators as a pricing check, to see what a reasonable rate is. Then I go directly to the hotel and ask for a rate.

OK, so perhaps you don't like bargaining. I hear you: one of the wonderful things about being a Westerner is that we've largely cut haggling out of our day-to-day lives. We pay the marked price ad move on. Imagine the annoyance if we had to strike a deal every time we went to the grocery store: yet much of the world lives like this. No, price bargaining is conflict, and plus, we worry that we look cheap. It's become unnatural for Westerners in daily life.

But there are real dollars at stake here, and that hotel has plenty of margin: they're going to make a profit, don't worry. This is how I like to go about my hotel negotiation:

Obviously, I get the internet rate first. Then I prefer to email the hotel asking for availability for a short stay -- one or two nights. They'll check, and at that point -- now that I've shown real booking interest, I'll enquire if they can match internet pricing. Simple, right? It almost always works. And emailing takes the stress out of it, though if you want to call them, go right ahead.

When it doesn't work right away: note that I asked for a 1-2 night figure. If they stay firm on rack rate, I'll tell them I'm still interested. I'll wait a couple of days, and then come back with a revised offer: how about 6 nights at the heavily discounted rate? Now I'm offering them an exchange: more nights, that should equate to a lower rate, and it gives them the opportunity to say yes. In these cases, you want the hotel to feel like they got something out of the negotiation, instead of just saying yes to a lower price. It assumes I can stay there for 6 nights, of course, that should be an option for you (if the price is right).

Now, the aggregators get pretty good rates, but you can do better with the two auction-style outfits, Hotwire and Priceline. They work slightly differently, if you've never used them before, but the outcome is the same. You can choose a location (a neighborhood in most cities), a hotel class, and a price range (or fixed amount bid). Then you book, and they tell you which hotel you've chosen. No backing out: you're stuck with the selection.

If I'm going to a city I know well -- Chicago, Manhattan, DC -- I'll be more likely to take this gamble, especially if I'm by myself. But if I'm picking out a neighborhood in a city I don't know...I'll pass on this strategy. It's perfectly reasonable to say, "a room is a room, as long as it's comfortable -- all I'm doing is sleeping there." I get that. But a lot can go wrong past that. The location could be noisy, or even dangerous. Ask yourself: why is this hotel having to discount their rooms so much? Hotwire & Priceline will tell you it's volume, or maybe last-minute deals. Personally, I've found these hotels often have a serious flaw, and are forced to discount. I would proceed with caution -- you get what you pay for, and sometimes not even that.

So much for the basics. But these help you only so much: eventually you'll need a place that doesn't use the aggregators. 

Now, you got to think about stuff. I played around a little more with the PackIt app; perfectly reasonable app, but it misses some key points. Here’s what you need to know about packing for Europe.

Start with the luggage. Naturally you want a good set, sturdy – some swear by hard-sided luggage, like Rimowa, but I’ve owned cars that cost less. Other bags have cool features like build-in seats and battery rechargers. If you fly every other month, sure. Otherwise, buy your luggage at TJ Maxx. You want a bag that rolls well with minimal effort; the handle should extend and retract easily. I like to have curb protectors at the bottom of the suitcase.

Most important: You really want to make sure you have a good size to weight ratio. Each bag is allowed to weight 50lbs, above that they start to charge (and they have gotten strict on this). You want a bag that has the most room with the least weight. Usually, you would be hard-pressed to fill a large bag and reach 50lbs. Clothes are not dense enough to get you there. Or, they were. We use individual packing cubes which help condense the clothes, and as a result, I’ve reached that 50lbs limit on my bag more than once.

You can get two smaller bags: on international flights you get two for free. But that does not necessarily carry over to a domestic connection, that second bag may cost you $75. Plus, you really don’t want to negotiate Europe – airports, town, hotel stairs – with two pieces of luggage. Take one plus a carry-on that you can shoulder-strap. So I shoot for a large bag under 9lbs, you can get that for under $100 easily.

Now, what to pack? Obviously that depends on where you’re going and what you’re doing. You’ll need to scout out the projected weather in advance; beware that northern Europe is quite variable, especially in summer. Count on rain if you’re spending June in England or Germany. Even Paris is tough to predict: We were there in mid-July, and one day the high was 60. If you’re north of the Alps, make sure you have at least one warm outfit, even in summer.

South of the Alps you’re more likely to get consistently warm weather once spring starts. Yes, March in Italy can be very rainy, so don’t think you’ll be on the beach: have indoor activities planned (luckily museums abound).

Anyway, you probably have all this figured out. So, where do I have anything to add? This: pack your bag to 50lbs total weight. Put in everything you think you need. Then take out 15lbs to get to the core of things you *really* need. OK, 10lbs if needed, but no less, and shoot for 15.

OK, so why are you going with empty space? Because you’ll be taking stuff back, of course! You knew that, but go ahead and plan for it. The usual suspect is wine, I always try to take two bottles back from wherever I’m going. You can’t take the wine/liquor back in the flight cabin with you, it has to be checked. And it weighs more than clothes. Ignore Duty Free; yes, you don’t have to pack Duty Free booze, it’s waiting for you when you get off the plane, but it counts to your import alcohol allotment, and the prices are fair at best, which is a shame: they used to be a great deal. I recall Bombay Sapphire 1.75L for $30 or so; no longer. Maybe they’re still good on cigarettes, but I wouldn’t know.

You also want to have room to purchase other bulky items on the way. Want to have a picnic in Paris? You’ll need a blanket, which will make a great souvenir. Sweaters, too, in case you have an unexpectedly chilly day. You can’t go to Italy without at least looking at shoes. And maybe a can of olive oil (you won’t be able to take many agro products back, like cheese or salami, but oils & vinegars are good to go).

You get a rebate on the Value Added Tax on purchases of manufactured goods, when you leave the country: have the retailer fill out a form and you can claim it at the airport. It’s 20% or so, and, coupled with the stronger dollar, makes several purchases in Europe quite affordable. Doesn’t work for wine, but quality wines are very affordable there anyway, so you won’t really care.

Lastly: you know enough to bring an electric converter, but remember to bring an extension cord. The converter you bring may have two outlets,tops, but you’ll want more. And the cord makes it more convenient. 6’ will do.