Finding deals on flights, first up is Hong Kong

I thought I would bring this topic up again, as I have not found anything new/recent in old posts.

First off, what are your favorite flight search/aggregator sites for finding round trip flights originating in Taipei?

Next, we want to go to HKG for a few days in the next month or so for a weekend getaway and I am wanting to know the following:

  1. Are there specials or seasonal sales coming up? (I have found fares for around $6000 NT)
  2. Any low cost carriers servicing this route (TPE-HKG)?
  3. Any recommended days to travel when the fares are lower?

Thanks and enjoy the rest of the weekend! :grinning: :airplane:

No true aggregator sites for trips originating from Taipei that I know of, unless you include “www.kayak.com”
That site then sets up a bunch of other sites like priceline.com, etc. at the same time.
I use that site for all my tickets coming out of North America to anywhere else. Always post cheapest to most expensive.

However, the cheapest flights that I’ve always gotten are from websites in Taiwan.
Best two I know of are:
“http://www.eztravel.com.tw” and “https://www.liontravel.com”

Days to travel for lower fares are always leave/arrive back on a weekday. Kind of a no-brainer, unless you wait until last moment and luck out on a cheap ticket.

You can use google flight website to search for cheaper flights around a certain day (+/- a given number of days). Allows you to see if going a few days earlier/later gets you a cheaper flight.

Wondering why you say this is this a no-brainer. Using Kayak, the cheapest fares were same day return on a Saturday or a Saturday-Sunday trip (for mid-March).

Thank you for the links to the Taiwanese websites - will be sure to give them a try.

Well, in my multiple decades of flying back/forth between N. America and within N. America, I’ve never come across a weekend (sat or sun) to weekend (sat or sun) ticket that was cheaper than weekday to weekday flight. Same sort of goes for my experience with inter-Asian flights.
Anyone else had better experiences? Honestly would be interested if this is not the same for Asia.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Like you I would also be interested in hearing from others regarding their experience in the region.

My own experience has been mostly between Europe and North America (also multiple decades) and in the last decade between Europe and Asia as well. Last year alone I flew US-Europe-Asia and US domestic on multiple occasions, and I have not found flights to be significantly less expensive on weekends. But that is just my personal observation.

we must be the outliers on the 95% bell curve. :grinning:

Certainly for buying tickets originating from Taiwan to go anywhere (whether inter-Asia or elsewhere), then myself and my Taiwanese wife have only used eztravel or liontravel to search for the cheap fares.
Then we actually go INTO their closest offices to book the flight to make sure we get the meals, seats, etc.

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[quote=“KHHville, post:6, topic:167148”]
we must be the outliers on the 95% bell curve.
[/quote] - that could be the case! :grinning:

Thanks again for the local info. There is a liontravel office near us - I will swing by there.

As far as the US, I too have rarely seen a weekend-to-weekend flight that’s cheaper than a weekday-weekday or weekend-weekday flight.

Sometimes it depends on the airport. Some smallish US airports are commuter hubs with very high demand for Sunday-evening/early-Monday departures and Friday-evening/Saturday-morning arrivals. In the past I have found attractive prices with Saturday morning departures and Sunday evening arrivals, because the planes used on the flights I booked were used for the commuter flights. Not so much at large airports, though.

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I use skyscanner , they include all the LCCs and give various options.

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For flights to HKG, I’d have a look at Cathay Pacific’s Taiwan site. Not sure if you’ll find what you want, but with nearly hourly departures, there’s a strong likelihood you’ll find something that could work.

Good luck!

Guy

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Taipei/Hong Kong is one of the busiest routes in the world so there is lots of availability at good rates. Not like some mysterious place to purchase tickets substantially lower on such a busy established route unless an airline is trying to undercut a competitor for that particular a week or two. In that and any case, if you can be available to travel flexibly on days you’ll get better rates.

I usually fly 7000 sometimes even 4500 round trip. Eva and Cathay or budget airlines.

Are the aggregators that useful these days? A few years back I wound up starting with the aggregators to get an idea of prices, then going directly to airline websites instead, because buying through the aggregators was too much of a pain and determining the real cost would take forever. But I haven’t travelled much lately.

Have taken over 60 international flights in last few years around Asia, America and Europe. I buy all tickets myself using this method. I want to be sure I can record mileage and points myself which sometimes is not available when you book through a travel agent.

  1. Check kayak, Google Flights, Skyscanner and ITA.
  2. Do an additional comparison check on budget airlines websites.
  3. Check actual airline websites.
  4. Find the schedule and ticket pricing that matches my desires and then go back to all the sites again to find the best price.

I can never find a travel agency that can compete with my own efforts unless want to do combination flight and hotel or tour or something. I rarely buy from an online travel agency or aggregator unless just a short flight and dramatically cheaper and I don’t care about miles.

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Thanks for this info - it helps me get a sense of what fares may be like on a route that I am not (yet!) familiar with.

I have used Kayak on a regular basis in a similar way to the method described by @tango42 with good results. In my experience (purchasing through EU based travel/ticket companies like Expedia), the conditions have not varied much from those of tickets purchased directly through the airline expect perhaps the ability to cancel a ticket within a certain amount of time.

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For travel originating here in Taiwan and flying out anywhere, you will not find any “western” site offering less expensive tickets. Kayak will not be cheaper, nor any other. The best option is using a local site, as mentioned before: eztravel or sometimes through the airline itself.

For the past decade, using eztravel has saved me about 100 to 200 USD per ticket on round trip flights within Asia and also to the USA.

Yes, shopping is most often the way to go.
Thanks for sharing your experience with eztravel!

I just picked random dates to Hong Kong like 14 March and eztravel does show like 700 less than kayak but that’s before the final purchase.

I didn’t check the actual airlines direct which could also be a good rate.

Travel agents may be dying but I found a good travel agent in tAiwan through their ads in the paper and they always got me the best fares

Just call and they deliver the tickets
I guess now the ticket is electronic

Usually cheapest to hkg were Thai or Malaysian or air Macau to Macau

Strangely the Thai tickets could be used on EVA

Maybe some agents still have cheap flights.

good to know