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Anyone done a package two-centre to Istanbul and then all inclusive?

1 reply

skeletonpyjamas · Yesterday 07:51

Did it work well? Who did you book with? We loved our al inclusive experience but think there or four days would be enough and thought about combining with an Istanbul city break. Can you book this kind of thing as a cheap package? My searches are being a bit inconclusive.

OP posts:
novocaine4thesoul · Yesterday 21:39

We sort of did this, but not quite as you have it described, and I think you will struggle to get "a package" unless you go through a specialised agent (and even then, I think they will just connect stuff up as we did, with some risk still attached and at great expense). Others may know more, hopefully. Also, depends how "packaged" you want it. We did ours independently, which has a lot of benefits (but some risk). Fly to Istanbul, stay there 3 or 4 nights, then fly to one of the airports that is close to AI resorts for a 3 or 4 , then fly home - much as I am not keen on LoveHolidays or Holiday Hypermarket, but they do allow you to book the AI hotel without flights. There are tons of cheap flights within Turkey. There are also cheap flights directly to Istanbul, and plenty of cheap flights home from the touristic areas (or the other way around). The bad side of this is you have to organise stuff yourself, so in order a) you need to get from IST or SAW to your hotel in Istanbul. Istanbul is massive and both airports are far out, there is a new rail link from IST (i think about 30-40 mins), and there is a more commonplace rail link from SAW (longer, an hour I think?), it is cheap. if your hotel is close to the terminus or one of the stations en-route, then happy days. You can of course take a taxi or uber from either but its a long way, the traffic is awful. b) You then have to do the same again in reverse to fly onto a provincial airport. The provincial airport is unlikely to have any option other than uber or taxi, there are some buses though, so again you use it to get to the AI hotel. c) you get same transport to provincial airport to fly home. Even if you are happy to do all of this, there are a couple of additional "flies in the ointment", First, if anything happens (particularly to your flights) then you may find yourself in difficulties making the whole thing connect up as it is classed as a self transfer, and some hotels are really bad if you have a booking for 3 nights, but do not show up on Day 1 (they cancel the lot, and can do so legit). Secondly, Istanbul's ariports are just SO far from the city (45km) that it isn't an easy to do 2 centre without some serious planning (as are a lot of the resorts, many over an hour from the provincial airport), Sorry to have rambled a bit, it IS all do-able, and I have done it, but unless you are really OK with all of the risk and the messing about, and having to leave contingency, then it is hard to do, and two "packages" at different times may honestly suit you better. Hope this helps. xx

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