Tips for Buying Plane Tickets and Concert and Sports Tickets
When buying tickets, there are many things to consider.
First off, what kind of ticket are you looking for? There are two main categories which will cover most potential ticket buyers: event tickets, such as concert or sports event, and travel tickets, plane, train, etc. Both have a distinct set of things to know. We’ll start with travel tickets:
For plane tickets:
1. Reserve them in advance if dates are important. Generally if you have fixed dates, the sooner you buy the better, as rates will go up the closer you get to the ticket dates. If you feel lucky, you can always wait and hope for a last-minute deal. These can be found and are usually a significant savings from the regular ticket price, but it is also a fairly large gamble that you will find one for the exact dates you want to travel, which makes last-minute deals a better choice for the flexible traveller.
2. Find a good aggregator, and one that doesn’t require membership fees. Qixo.com is over-and-above the best for plane tickets, without comparison in my experience, both for ease of use – extremely user-friendly and includes a live chat operator – and for price of flights. Also, the prices they quoted were remarkably close to the final prices after taxes and fees – for example, I recently purchased a plane ticket for $840 and the final charge was just over $860. A note: they are not, however, a good source for hotels, at least in my experience hotel prices turned up quite expensive and not many hotels were found in out-of-the-way destinations.
3. Avoid student travel sites and sites that advertise extremely steep discounts, unless you are prepared to spend hours shopping for tickets. Student sites, in my experience, although they advertise lower prices, have the maddening habit of listing a price, only to tell you it is unavailable or partially unavailable once you select it. I once searched a student travel site for plane tickets and came up with 20 results, of which about ten were lower than Qixo’s lowest price. Guess what? They were all unavailable! The only fares the site still had open were comparable to the going rate at sites like Orbitz.com and Travelocity – all significantly higher than Qixo’s. This was some ten months before my desired travel date, so perhaps the trick to finding fares on student sites is to shop earlier. In my experience, though, it simply isn’t worth the effort. Sites which advertise extremely low fares use another gimmick to lure shoppers in – they cut out the taxes and fees. Once added, these immediately bring the price up to the typical amount on regular fare shopping sites, if not higher.
4. A tip for traveling to Europe from the US: almost any trip can be had for less if you are willing to make a few stops, particularly a stopover in one of the major London airports. Buy a ticket to London Gatwick or Heathrow from your departure airport and take a domestic flight with RyanAir or Easyjet across the Channel. For example, a direct flight to Europe destinations from the US west coast and inland Northwest can cost between $1400 and $2400, while a ticket to London from the same departure airport, traveling on Mondays, can be had for between $800-$1000, and a roundtrip ticket on a domestic carrier such as the two mentioned above costs from $40 (London to Cork) to $600 (London to Athens), in both cases a significant savings.
5. Speaking of traveling on Mondays, the day of the week you travel on can make a huge difference. I have found that weekends, especially Saturdays, tend to be most expensive, while Mondays are least expensive, followed by Tuesdays. Also – very important – find out what the high season is in your destination country. Different global regions will have different lenient seasons and different peak travel times. If no direct information is available, you can still look up climate information for your region and make an educated guess on when the high travel volume times will be. For example, the best and most expensive time to visit the Grecian islands is not during our summer, when extremely high temperatures make any outdoor excursions from 12 noon to evening uncomfortable and even dangerous. Rather, prices are higher in September and into October, when temperatures are cooler but the rainy season hasn’t quite hit yet.
For train and bus tickets, unless it is a high-traffic route such as most of the London-Europe trains and requires a reservation oryou absolutely have to ride a certain train, I would advise against making an online reservation, as they usually are not only more expensive than buying from the ticket booths, but are also generally non-refundable and allow for no changes, so in the entirely possible case you miss a connection, you are out the money. Buses and trains are a good place to keep flexibility in your schedule, too – if you have purchased a ticket you will feel pressured to take that train, whereas once you arrive you may find you need a few hours or even a day to adjust and get over jet lag before jumping right into the next leg of your journey. Often specials and promotions are run at local ticket offices, as well, that you can take advantage of and save even more.
For concert, game, and other event tickets:
If the venue is local, you can usually purchase the tickets in advance at a passable discount. Group rates also tend to offer a good deal, if you can find friends who are going to the same events. For events you will travel to, there are the usual established online vendors, but recently there are also a number of reliable sellers on Ebay who sell tickets for prices lower than any other site I found. Ebay is a bit of a jungle, though, their regulations don’t prevent scam artists from fleecing the unwary so far, so check out any Ebay seller carefully before you buy. Read their feedback and ask if you can contact a previous buyer – if they refuse, they are likely a scam. I had a positive experience with an Ebay seller – I purchased tickets to a Josh Groban concert for $150 that were selling for upwards of $250 everywhere else I looked. Shipping was fast and the seller was polite and professional. When something came up and I discovered I wouldn’t be able to go, I resold the tickets a month before the concert for $500. So for the budding entrepreneur or anyone looking for a great deal, Ebay is a slightly risky but still certainly viable option for the modern ticket buyer.
You can always take the chance, of course, that there will be tickets available at the door, and wait till you arrive to buy tickets. This is the largest gamble of all, though, for traveling ticket buyers, since there is the chance, which increases with the popularity of the event, that no tickets will be available and after all the time and energy you spent getting there, you won’t get to attend the event after all.
A note about convention tickets and the like: “Gold” or “Premium” packages, in my experience, tend to be hugely overpriced and overrated, usually offering perhaps one or two exclusive items and then an array of other items/additions available at a lower price if bought separately. They may also include things you don’t particularly care about, so unless a package includes something you absolutely can’t get any other way, just buy the cheapest base rate and pick and choose your options separately. Packages routinely promise more than they deliver in a numbers of ways, as well – for example, I recently purchased a Gold ticket to an event which promised a “front-row” seat to purchasers. On arriving, we found ourselves seating more than halfway to the back wall, and other “Gold” ticket holders found themselves even further back. Apparently, since entire numbers of seats was so low, they were all considered “front-row”. We were also promised laid-back, “non-rushed” autograph signings, but in fact there turned out to be no special treatment given to gold ticket holders at all, and the celebrities were so rushed they were leaving their booths and running person to person just trying to get everyone’s pictures signed. They didn’t even have time to make eye contact. To be fair, packages do sometimes offer truly exclusive items or events, but just as often they advertise “exclusive” benefits of which any surplus seats/spaces are sold to savvy shoppers and late buyers at a much lower rate after the eager early birds have snatched up the premium tickets.
When buying any ticket, one thing seems constant, risk/flexibility and price have a fairly predictable relationship: the one goes up as the other goes down. This should be remembered and a plan B should be formulated if the risk is large enough to potentially cause problems, or any money saved by circumventing the safe and conventional could quickly be lost. Realize your priorities and shop accordingly – some people may prefer to pay the highest price, counting the peace of mind worth the extra cash. On the other end of the spectrum, some may go so far as to search out bargains and byroads simply for the enjoyment of the hunt, or from a desire to avoid the mainstream, the tourist trap, the road too well traveled. Whatever your leaning, think about your purchase but not too hard, try to remember that balance is important, that deals that seem too good to be true often are, but that, also, the road less traveled by can be a rewarding and eye-opening choice if you are in a place and of the inclination to take it.
