Booking a city break. How?

[Miljea]

I'd like to think I'm not stupid, but the evidence may be to the contrary... 😁

I'm widely travelled. And we've 'done' flight+villa+car hire on many occasions, all separately booked.

However, I've never done a 'city break' where you buy the 'flights, hotel, breakfast, discounts on city tour' deal before!

Which websites do you look on?

Thinking Krakow and Istanbul.

Any thoughts happily received!

I look at Expedia for hotels, then check for reviews and book directly. Flights are also booked directly with the airline.

I may loose out on deals but I found that packages often give you bad flight times where you loose a day because flights are either late on arrival date or early on return. They are cheaper for a reason.

As above - flights directly with the airline then expedia for hotels.

I go onto skyscanner and find flights that suit to a place I want to go and book them.
I then go on one of the zillion hotel booking websites and find a hotel and book that.
I then do all my online booking for attractions/restaurants etc..

I would search for flights using Slyscanner, then for hotels using Trivago. I would also look for accommodation on Airbnb.

The website of the local department of tourism should be able to provide info on public transport, discounts etc.

If you live near London use BA flight & hotel option for Krakow and book Stradonia serviced apartments - excellent.

I book direct with airline for flights, sometimes use skyscanner to see options first if don't know. Hotels generally by Booking.com.

British Airways Holidays is a one stop shop for me. But I live near Heathrow

Generally I look at Skyscanner to see which companies have cheap deals and when. Then I go to the company website to book, as the Skyscanner price never includes the right flight time or luggage or owt. Then I look at Booking.com. Occasionally TripAdvisor, but after many years Booking.com have never let me down. (Even when cancelling at short notice)

For city tours I just google or use TripAdvisor to check whether having the City Card is good value as opposed to doing it yourself. Depending on where you are, a public transport pass might be great value, but paying loads extra for a "city card" when you will do 1 museum might not be. For example we went to Barcelona and did free walking tours and took the Metro twice. And took 2 taxis. It was still cheaper for our group than buying the cards.

Jet 2 city breaks another possibility to look at.

Depends where you live. I look for flights from my nearest airports (Doncaster, east midlands and Leeds at a push). Then I use hotels.com or booking.com for hotels or apartments. I never fret about breakfasts as we tend to use local cafes for that, or supermarkets if we are self-catering in an apartment. Then I just book airport parking, insurance and figure out cheapest transfers.

We book travel by train usually through Deutsche Bahn or Eurostar and hotels a variety of different ways. Booking.com or Trivago or someone.

Never found a hotel website we are happy with though. They are all poor quality and designed to confuse you into making a decision. Quite hard to book two rooms and basically impossible to guarantee interconnecting rooms. We always write it in the special requirements but usually arrive to find the rooms are three floors apart unless we've phoned ahead

Make sure your insurance covers airline failure. In case airlines go bump.

Last minute . Com sometimes has really good flight/hotel deals, beating the airlines own prices. Also BA seem to include baggage on their city breaks , if you want to check in a bag it's worth comparing prices.

Thank you everyone! 😊

All thoughts gratefully received.

I always check Skyscanner for flights first, then look at Airbnb for accommodation.

I often use the BA website for flight + hotel - but you have to fly with BA of course, which you may not want to do. I've booked trips to Rome, Hamburg, Berlin and Copenhagen that way and they've been quite cost effective and as a pp said baggage is included.

Other times I just book flights and hotel separately eg to go to Dublin I booked Flybe flights and then found a hotel I liked the look of.