Travel booking protip: when your method of transportation is offered as a codeshare, check the price on all channels.
As in the title. For those who are unfamiliar with codesharing, it's essentially when you buy a ticket for travel with "Hustles Airlines" that is, in fact, on a plane owned and operated by "Air Stanada." It can pay to look. I'll give you a few examples from my own life:
1) Most recently, booking a flixbus from Berlin to Poznan. Those buses are all operated by polskibus. Flixbus was selling it for 19 euros per person and charging a ~1.7eur transaction fee if you didn't pay with a German bank account. Polskibus was selling it for the equivalent of 10 euros per person, no transaction fee for credit card payment.
2) Or, booking a train back from Poznan to Berlin. Deutsche Bahn was selling the Polish IC train from Poznan to Berlin Gesundbrunnen for something like 30eur. The Polish IC website was offering it for 16 eur. Hm. (As an aside, and probably a topic for another travel booking protip: wise choice of ticketing carrier can save you a decent chunk of change)
3) Or, flying from Vancouver to Bordeaux via Montreal and Brussels. For the exact same flights, Air Canada was charging $1500, whereas Brussels Airlines was charging $700.
General wisdom says to avoid codeshares, and in cases #1/2, it makes sense. Case #3 though... Air Canada is operating the flight from Vancouver to Montreal, but buying it under Brussels' code makes it $800 cheaper. So there are--rarely--benefits to the consumer. Further benefits: if you're earning "valuable" award miles on these flights, you'll be pleased to know that Star Alliance carriers award by metal, not by flight number, and so it's more favourable to book a United/Air Canada-operated Lufthansa/Brussels/Swiss-coded flight than vice-versa. SkyTeam and OneWorld, however, award by flight number, and so there's a disadvantage to booking a European airline's code.
Anyways, if you already knew all this, perhaps it was news to you that bus operators codeshare--it sure was to me!
Submitted September 22, 2017 at 09:55PM by Pickafli http://ift.tt/2xzWsNd
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