Hi,
Having some issues with booking a ticket for a friend and need some help please!
My friend wants to fly from Hong Kong to Kunming in early July. It's too late to post him a physical ticket so the only option for him is an E-TICKET.
I found the international websites which offer e-tickets wayyyyy too expensive. Ctrip gives me some crap about not being able to book to HK on their site. Elong let's me book from HK to international cities, but not the mainland.
What can I do? Would ctrip or elong offer e-tickets if I went into their office (or did the whole fax a zillion things)?
Thanks for any help! :)
www.zuji.com.hk
www.edreams.com
www.travelocity.com
www.lastminute.com
almost all online air ticket sites can book tickets from anywhere to anywhere. Absolutely no reason to choose a local or regional ticket agent unless you need to pay in cash.
International ticketing websites have same or better prices a lot of the time. Always e-tickets, its very rare to find paper tickets these days.
Or you can try the airlines direct that fly from Hong Kong to Kunming:
www.dragonair.com
www.hkairlines.com
There's also china eastern but i dont think you can book online directly from them (although you may get a china eastern flight through another ticketing agent)
sorry, just saw you'd tried international sites. should usually be priced competitively. perhaps its a pricey time of year.
If you google "air ticket consolidator" you might find something, otherwise try the airline sites direct.
Elong and Ctrip won't sell you tickets from hong kong, only from Shenzhen which would be considerably cheaper but your friend would have to get there either by hovercraft or train. There is a hovercraft terminal about 5 minutes drive from shenzhen airport with free shuttle bus. The ferries go from Central, Kowloon and Hong Kong airport.
forgot to add that they've recently started a check in service for Shenzhen airport at the Kowloon station of the HK airport express line. apparently you can check in you luggage, get your boarding card and then take a bus directly to shenzhen airport.
If looking for flights directly from hong kong another travel agent i've used in the past is www.4thetravel.com - they are in hong kong and usually have quite good deals but not sure if they take credit cards - might have to do a bank transfer.
Thanks for the detailed reply Greg, it was really helpful! Problem solved. It never occured to me to try HK airlines.
Since I posted, Ctrip is again allowing fares from HK to be booked. Very strange, as for the past few weeks it always said this was not possible and that one needed to call Beijing to book. The ctrip price is virtually the same as that offered no the HK airlines though.
Cheers!
glad to be of help. I think Hong Kong airlines don't charge 3% and expect photocopies of credit card signature slip. Only mainland chinese companies seem to have this requirement.
