March airfare to Italy - buy now or wait?
 

I am looking at travel to Italy in late March, after the current sale fares have expired. Current prices are $650 - $700 from Atlanta. These seem like summer level prices to me. Can I expect something lower in the next couple of weeks, or is this really a decent price? Your advice is appreciated.<BR><BR>Dan

Dan,<BR><BR>Which city are you flying in and out of?<BR>And what are your exact dates?

I'm havign the same problem.<BR><BR>Lowest fare is around 600 for late march departure (3/23/-3/31) FROM NYC TO ROME

Rome tends to be substantially more expensive than London, Paris, or Frankfurt.

NickC,<BR><BR>I just check the consolidator that I like (which does allow ff miles if that's important), for your specific dates of travel and city pairs the fair would be a total of $445.00 on Air Canada. If your interested please email me, or I would encourgage you to check with your local travel agents. If you do not like Air Canada this consolidator offers other airlines as well.

The current sale fare has a LAST day to travel date of Mar 20.<BR>Which means you must return Mar 20 or earlier. Last day to ticket on this is Jan 28.<BR>If traveling after this and returning by Mar 31, I would wait a week or so.<BR>Apr1-Shoulder season begins-that is why you are getting $600-700, if you are returning Apr 1 or After.<BR>I am in the Atlanta area.<BR>Summer Levels are more in the $900-1000 range.

What happened to the no commercialization policy?

Sorry to blow you away Vic. But I am not soliciting here, just trying to be helpful. And showing these people how far off base you truely are with regards to the profession I am in. I suspect you are the gouger as my grandma always told me "Guilty dog barks first"!!!!!

If you are not soliciting. Why not tell everyone the details of what you're selling, so that they have a choice of using you or someone else?

Penny, please post the telephone number of the agency you work for, as well as your private email address -- and from now on, people with questions they want answered by you, especially, can write directly to you.

Vic.<BR>It seems to me Penny encouraged the client to check with their local agency and call her only if they could not helpp. Not every agent is as good as another, Agents who post here are giving answers to be helpful. An informed consumer can then take the information he has received to his local agent. I guess I have decided to pass knowledge on to both Agents and Consumers, so people will not take some of the incorrect advice given on this board and others.<BR>I hardly think helping people is advertising.

Vic and KLM,<BR><BR>This is my private email address. I stated before I refused to hide behind a blind email and bogus name. I don't post the numbers or the flight info, because, unless your a travel agent you won't even get past saying hello to these companies. Why does it seem to bother you so much?? This is what puzzles me and many others. Until you fess up the real reason, I guess we'll just have to keep guessing. But all your snide, nasty, bully the underdog around tactics won't work with me, I'm not going anywhere. This is a public board. I would suggest you do what travel agents did, pay for your own private forum board, requiring membership approval. Then you can allow whoever you want, and disallow those you don't. <BR><BR>I intend to stay right here and when I see that I have something to add or an answer I think will help, that is what I am going to do. Whether it hair lips you or every dog in the nation.

Penny, either get a job with Fodors or stow it. We notice you haven't yet metastacized over to the US and Europe forum. Maybe you know your own limits. One can only wonder, however, if you are a shut-in whose entire life is checking in to the "Airlines" forum on the Fodors site about 6 times a day to say "check with a travel agent" in effect. I don't think there's any other poster in history who has dominated the place as much as you do. PLEASE get your own website and go away.<BR><BR>

Agents have plenty of time to check the Fodors Forum while we sit on hold to 3 hours waiting to complete a reservation when the online system "glitched" and did not let us complete the transaction.<BR>We figure you Post Questions because you want them answered.<BR>Guess we are wrong. Seems like many of you are on here more than us.<BR>If you do not want our Opinion or Answer, do not read the Post. Others do want Answers to Questions.<BR>Since we sell travel for a "meager living", and travel ourselves, and get feedback from our clients who have been to these places, we just Might Know the Correct Answer.<BR>

And perhaps myself and others are sick of your ill temper, bad manners, nasty, rude, arrogant selfs as well. But you won't keep me away. And recheck the US and Europe boards, your wrong, I have annswered over there too.......have a great day.

Penny, I don't think you should give these creeps the time of day or even to respond to them. I for one would like to ask you a question. My family and I are going to Europe from Houston this summer and would like to know what airline would be able to go nonstop from Houston to Amsterdam,on the outbound, and returning from St.Petersburg back to Houston? Also, we have about 400,000 American Express points. How many would be required to have first class seats? Should we pay for the ticket then upgrade with mileage or what? I would appreciate any imput. Thanks,AG

Amy, I'm not a travel agent, and I frequently bash them. That being said, if you have that many Membership Rewards points, you might be interested in knowing that Am Ex and Continental are now having a 25%bonus conversion. For every 10,000 Mem. Rewards points you transfer to Continental, Continental will treat it as 12,500. You should check out www.flyertalk.com and look there for the specifics or you can look at continental.com. Penny probably isn't going to want to help you on this because unless you buy the ticket from her and then upgrade, she's not going to make any money.