Best way to search for good ticket prices to Italy
 

Hi All,

I was wondering if anybody has a certain airline, website, or travel agent that seems to consistently have good plane ticket fares to Italy. I always try the standard sites (Expedia, Travelocity, etc.), but wondered if there were some options I haven't been trying.

Thanks!

P.S. I live in the western U.S.

There is no certain place that will guarantee you get a good price. You just have to start early and search a lot. I've had the most luck in the last few years by booking directly with the airlines. You can also put in an email notification on some sites that will send you a message when a fare drops.
I've looked at Travelocity, Expedia, Hotwire, all of them, but many of the their "bargain" fares were not all that good, and also, many of those flights had 2-3 stops, something I don't want. It's worth a lot to me to have maybe 1-2 stops at most.

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First, use Kayak.com, which is a search engine that grabs fares from multiple websites. Fast and easy to use.

You'll get some ideas of itineraries, airlines and prices. Then either try using the links on kayak.com to the actual booking site, or go to the airline to see if you can get the same price from the airline's own website.

Another very powerful tool is beta.itasoftware.com. It's for more advanced search, and you can find lowest fares for a city pair for a whole month, and other features.

I use kayak.com for flights and also a newer site called www.yapta.com. Yapta lets you enter the specific flights you are interested in and it will track any price changes over time. It enabled me to catch a $200 price drop earlier this week for an SFO-Italy flight that I had been tracking for the past two months. I noticed today that the price is again back up to the higher price. So check out Yapta.

where are you flying from?

We will be flying from Billings, Montana in mid October.

I will give these suggestions a go. I am particularly interested in the sounds of the beta.itasoftware.com as I am hoping to fly into Florence and out of Venice.

(Our prior vacation plans were put to the side quickly when we received word from a Venetian cousin inviting us to their wedding celebration. Who needs a reason to return to Italy? However, this gave us the extra incentive as we are looking forward to this special time! However, we would like to take in Florence again, and make our way to Venice. We would prefer not having to backtrack to Florence for our departure.)

Thanks all!

The DC NBC local news listed several travel tips the other night. For finding low airfares it suggested Mobissimo.com. I tried it for IAD-AMS and it listed all the fares and where to buy them.