We are looking for the best value for our money on our trip to Europe. Not the cheapest, but the best value. I have read on other threads that sometimes an "open-jaw" ticket will be cheaper than a round trip ticket, and it certainly suits our travel plans better. <BR><BR>We would like to spend four days in London, then take the Chunnel to Paris for four days before returnin to the US. We do not have a set date as to when we need to go (the sooner the better , and that throws doubt into every search I perform on travel sites. Most sites search for airfares on specific dates to quote a price, but I would like to search for price to make our decision on date. <BR><BR>Am I wasting my time on the internet sites? Would I be better served to find a really good travel agent help us find the best deal? I'd also be interested to know if anyone has used e-vacations.com to book their trips.<BR><BR>Thanks. I have spent days on this forum and have learned so much.

I'll have to admit I don't usually buy things based on price alone as I always know the exact dates I want to travel, so am not real sure of internet sites that have that feature -- but, I think some do have a variety of options and will give you cheaper alternatives if you say you are flexible on dates. Yesterday I was using USAir's own web site and it was very convenient in that regard, showing you dates where you can get your itinerary cheaper than the dates you selected. Other than that, I'm not sure which major ones do -- I usually buy on Travelocity and they are pretty good listing things by price and then suggesting alternatives cheaper than the ones I picked.<BR><BR>However, I just wanted to say that I've taken several Eur. open-jaw ticket trips, as well as many RT, and I have never paid excess or a penalty for open-jaw (over half of each pertinent RT) but I have never heard of an open-jaw being cheaper than a RT. This is of course within the appropriate city's rates, some cities are always cheaper than others, and sometimes I've noticed people confuse that with the open-jaw pricing and think it's more expensive just because they are flying in or out of a city that is always more expensive than the other. Both London and Paris have pretty good air fares, luckily.<BR><BR>In any case, that is a fairly simple itinerary to me, I'd try a few web sites myself (Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Qixo, some airline that flies to both cities if there is one) before going to an agent but I don't like agents and don't have the patience or time to deal with them. If you know one you like, why not. Even if you have to adjust dates a little on those search sites, it's not that much trouble (I often change dates within a couple days to see, but that's the extent of my flexibility). If you are completely flexible up to weeks or months different dates, and only picking by price, that might not work if you aren't familiar with when prices tend to be lower. On the other hand, some of my bad experiences with travel agents are because they don't know that kind of information and just want you to tell them exact dates, also, and I don't think they are going to want to spend a lot of time on that if they don't already know, unless you pay them to do so.

Airfares are a crapshoot - no way to know what future date is going to have better fares than another date. Each airline will have its own fares, and they can be different from every other airline. General rule of thumb: June-September fares are highest; so are those around Christmas/New Year's, and sometimes Thanksgiving. Cheapest fares are winter months (eom Nov, Dec-eom March, except as noted above); April/May, October/November are usually sort of in-between.<BR><BR>An open-jaw ticket can be cheaper; don't forget to add in additional transportation charges to "get back" to the airport - i.e. r/t to London might appear cheaper than in London/out Brussels, but you've got to get from Brussels to London and that adds time and cost. Unless in/out same airport works, or is a smokin' deal, I do open jaw.<BR><BR>A GOOD (and I stress GOOD) travel agent is worth his/her weight in gold for finding cheaper airfares, better flights/connections, special deals (like an airline opening a new route and offering promotional fares), and booking hotels - this is only valuable if you want to stay in larger hotels that are geared for tourists (small indy hotels don't make the TA's lists).

The site I have seen that finds dates given lowest prices, such as www.expedia.com fare compare feature, only seen to do this on simple roundtrips. You feed range of dates you are interested, it lists specific flights and fare basis code that gets you these special rates. But I have not seen something like this for open-jaw trips. Perhaps someone else has seen something like it.

You probably are better off to go to a travel agent. I don't consider myself an expert but I have a couple of tips for you if you want to look for fares. If you check www.travelocity.com you will see on the left side corner a section that says find me the best round trip, "from", "to" and it gives you two options. First one is "my dates are flexible". I know you wanted an open-jaw, but this way you can get an idea about the round trip prices. Usually, the results are listed from the lowest to highest fares available and each option shows the dates the fare is available. I just put Chicago O'hare to London in and got fares starting from $493 back. On this page you can modify your search (left hand side) and choose a period from today to whenever in the future you want to travel. A search for lowest roundtrip from Chicago to Paris shows a fare of $471. You can add half of each figure to get what you will pay for an open-jaw. I use this method for getting an idea about the prices. In fact we will be flying to Paris for vacation and will return from London. I booked our tickets on American's web which allows open-jaw ticketing. We had planned to take the Eurochunnel but found very cheap tickets and decided to fly from Paris to Lutton, thanks to many posters here who provide excellent tips. I hope this helps.

It has always been my practice to call<BR>our (great) agent in such a situation -- <BR>open dates, open jawes, and/or optional<BR>destinations. I give her two months to come up with her best deal, and we take it. She has access to consolidators and <BR>has the time to work her way through the<BR>multiple options and find a great deal. <BR><BR>But this last time her best deal (with consolodators) was $100 more (per ticket) than what I found on expedia.com. There was an ``internet <BR>sale'' that we could only use by directly ordering the tickets. I felt<BR>bad about using her efforts for 2 months, but we gave her a huge tip and <BR>then booked it ourselves. <BR><BR>This was a real eye-opener for me. From <BR>now on I plan to set aside a couple evenings and systematically go through the websites that can handle open-jawed<BR>trips.