Flights to Italy
 

We are renting a villa for two weeks in Tuscany next summer. I have been watching the flights for a few months and the prices do not seem to be budging. Do you think the price will stay the same and I should just book now? Or do you think the prices may drop in January?

>>Do you think the price will stay the same and I should just book now? Or do you think the prices may drop in January?<<

No one on here is a fortune teller. There is absolutely no way to know if the fares will be higher, lower, or just the same . . .

The airlines use very specific formulas/algorithms to set fares and if they told you what those were . . . they'd have to kill you :)

Nobody knows, but constant watching is the way to go. After a while you'll see the ups and down (there will be ups and downs as it gets closer, it's just too far into the future to do anything yet), and when you see something extremely low you'll recognize it as such.

Search with www.matrix.itasoftware.com and use their "Nearby" feature to see fares into airports within reach of reasonable train trips - could be worth a bunch. For example, Pisa and Florence and Bologna for the Toscana region, and Milan of course, and possibly even Rome.

For what kind of a difference a train ride would make see www.trenitalia.com.

Also subscribe to email alerts for your targets (input a few airports based on itasoftware's "nearby" suggestions) at www.airfarewatchdog.com - costs nothing, they don't sell, it's harmless and very useful.

Prices to where?
If you are not checking Pisa, Florence, and Rome you may be missing out.
I seldom suggest buying more than 6 months out.

Have you already rented the villa for particular dates? Or are your arrival/departure dates flexible?

>>>If you are not checking Pisa, Florence, and Rome you may be missing out.<<<

Add Bologna to that list as I find cheaper fares there sometimes. Milan also if you don't mind the train from there, but depends on where in Tuscany.

I usually buy plane tickets about 6 to 8 weeks before travel. If there will be a fare sale for summer travel, which we can't predict at all, it would be sometime in the spring. The airlines wait to see how their planes are filling up, and adjust prices accordingly. A newspaper (I think the Wall Street Journal) did a study recently and found the best prices two months in advance of travel date.

If you are flying from the US East Coast, friends have found Iberia through Madrid to one of the Italian regional airports listed above to be very cost effective.

Once I find a few flights I am interested in, I track them on Yapta. I tracked the same flight, but with two different departure dates. One departure on a Friday and one on a Tuesday. One morning I received an email alert from Yapta and my Tuesday departure had dropped by 13%. The Friday departure was holding steady and was several hundred dollars higher than the Tuesday departure. Obviously, I had a bit of flexibility with my schedule, but different days of the week can make a difference. Yapta is free and very easy to use, Kayak as well.

Thanks for your tips. I have been using Kayak and a few others for a few months and the fares have not become cheaper they have gone up a little. I checked Rome and Milan too. If we flew out of Rome we would need to spend an extra night which would eat up any savings on the air. Our dates are fixed as we have to fly over on a Friday and back on a Saturday. I was just wondering if I would be jumping the gun to buy now or I should just bite the bullet and buy them. We are staying in the Val D'Orcia region near Pienza. I will check Yapta, thanks.

Historically, you may save a hundred bucks or so by waiting till Jan/Feb. But lately the airlines have been playing us like marionettes as it regards summer travel.

The price of the tickets I bought a few weeks ago on Delta for travel in June (SFO-VCE-FCO-SFO) have gone up by around $150 per ticket.

I wanted to add that I checked the seat maps for the planes listed for our flights and there a LOT of empty seats.