LIBERTYVILLE, Illinois – With the Internet, you can go online and spend hours searching for a hotel bargain and deals on air fares. And you can spend more hours looking for ways to get from the airport to the hotel, where you can buy a bus or train ticket, all the while wondering if your taxi driver will speak English. You can read reviews and hope that the hotel you chose really is clean and conveniently located. Then you’ll need to plan where to have breakfast, how to make reservations for sightseeing, the list seems endless.
And the main question remains – are you really getting the best deal by booking your trip yourself?
Tour operators who have high-volume purchasing power get discounted prices you can only dream about. Even if they include airport to hotel transfers, a sightseeing tour and daily breakfast in an air/hotel package, they can still beat any price you can get — probably by hundreds of dollars.
TourCrafters, for example, a company of Italy experts known for affordable packages (who have checked every hotel), is currently offering a 4-night Rome City Break that costs US$1,252 until May 15 and again from September 1 to October 31. Of course, the price goes up in summer (high season), but let’s zero in on that US$1,252. It includes the round-trip flight from New York, the fuel surcharge (a big expense this year), airport transfer, hotel accommodations, daily buffet breakfast, a half-day sightseeing tour, service charges, taxes, and even an ice cream cone in an historic gelateria. (Air fare from other departure cities is additional.)
If you were to book these elements yourself (in addition to hours spent at the computer), you would pay US$815 for air fare, US$420 for fuel surcharge, US$99 for airport transfer, US$316 for hotel, US$72 for breakfast, US$49 for sightseeing, US$62 for service charges and taxes, and US$3 for the ice cream cone — a total of US$1,836 and a difference of US$584.
This is why smart people take the fast, easy, money-saving way out… and buy a package.
For more information about TourCrafters’ variety of packages (note that they offer packages and tours to France, Spain, Greece, and Turkey, as well as photography tours in Italy), go to www.tourcrafters.it and click the destination of choice or Hot Deals of the Week. For reservations, call 800-482-5995.
