Book flights now or wait?

[Goingonagondola]

I'm planning to take my mum to Venice for her 70th birthday in October. We are about 14 weeks off the planned travel date now. Flights are about £75 out and £85 back (different airline) - plus luggage, seat reservations and all those extra costs of course. That's doable but obviously I'd rather pay less. Is there a chance they'll come down or should I just book now and secure some good seats etc? I suppose if they come down, it's not like it'll reduce all the extras so realistically not much of a saving?

(That price is each of course). By the way, I'm a TOTALLY inexperienced traveller so need all the advice I can get.

Go to Google flights and see if the price is high low or normal for your dates (green, yellow or red, see screenshot). You can track prices to get an email alert each time it changes.

Seems pretty low to me. Quite often they go up rather than down towards the date

Prices are very hard to predict, here is the price history for 2 flights to the same destination, a few days apart:

The only thing you can be sure of is that they will almost always rise quite a lot as the date approaches, a week or a few days before.

You don't have to pay any of the extras if you don't want to, although if you want to guarantee that you are seated next to each other then seat reservations are the only way to do that on most budget airlines.

Are you close to any one particular airport in the UK?.

Fly direct there; you do not need to have any stopovers for what is a two hour flight time (it will just make a long day even longer). Use the same airline for both departure and return.

Short haul flights often increase in price the closer you get to departure date so I would book flights and accommodation sooner rather than later.

It's impossible to say and depends on how well that flight is selling.

It sounds on the high side for a European return flight on a budget airline outside the main peak, but I'm not familiar with that route.

We usually fly to Spain or Malta and generally pay £100-150 return in May/June or Sept/Oct but have booked at far shorter than 14 weeks and paid as little as £60 return.

The earlier you book the cheaper

To look at all flights, all airlines use Skyscanner

If you travel on a Tuesday or Wednesday & avoid school holidays, festive days & weekends it's always cheaper

You can look at individual airlines
For their own prices

If you are inexperienced traveller, you may get a better deal going to a local travel agent, who will book your flights, transfers & hotel
Ensure you purchase travel insurance the day you book the holiday
Ensure your passports have minimum 6 months on them

If you are flying independently. You need to work out how you will travel from the airport to your hotel. Also how much it will cost.
There are no cars or buses inside Venice. It's walk or water taxi once you get to Venice

Have you booked your hotel yet OP?

I got an incredible deal from Secret Escapes on The Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal which is in a prime spot, near to all transport, right next to harry's bar and round the corner from St Marks.

Also as it was a special birthday we got a free upgrade to a suite, it was fabulous.

Out of season you will pay a fraction of the price.

I've booked an apartment, yes.

Why insurance on the day you book, please? Just because you're covered immediately? I already paid half the apartment and haven't booked flights yet...

We are flying out from one airport (with one airline) and back into another one in a totally different part of the country out of necessity so it's not a return flight, which I guess will push the cost up a bit?

I did try a travel agent but they weren't quoting anything cheaper than I could find myself. We'll get a water bus from the airport and then the apartment owner is meeting us.

If you're flying on Ryanair, Easyjet etc they don't sell return flights, they're all singles, so the way you're booking doesn't increase the cost, in fact you can do it cheaper that way, the only issue is in the UK if you want to drive to the airport as you would have to retrieve your car, but if you use public transport or get a taxi and have access to more than one airport, this can be a good way to save. I think Easyjet might have a small booking fee (£10-20) but generally, the cost is simply X + Y.

You need to book insurance sooner rather than later because if something happens that would mean that you couldn't travel, obviously you need insurance cover in force to claim.

Currently you're only faced with losing some or all of your accomodation cost, assuming that it's non refundable but say you had booked and paid for everything and it was non refundable and then one of you developed a serious medical condition, if you haven't got round to booking the insurance, you may lose all the money if you couldn't travel.

Try this website, don't bok through, but just use to look at flights.
Kiwi flights