Planning a Stopover Can Enhance Your Vacation

Like the sound of a few days in Paris on your way to or from somewhere in Europe, Africa, or India? If so, Air France has an idea for you: a free Paris stopover (in either direction or both directions) on any trip connecting through the city. The "Plus Paris" promotion applies on any Air France through tickets, even for the cheapest excursions. The press release didn't indicate any cutoff date, but, presumably, the offer won't be around forever. Check with a travel agent or Air France for more details.

For years, I've been a big fan of stopovers between two long-haul flights back-to-back in economy class—particularly those truly miserable cases where you have to get off one red-eye, hang around an airport for five or six hours, then get on another red-eye. Beyond the physical punishment, two consecutive long-haul flights also worsen jet lag.

Obviously, many of you would gladly sacrifice an extra travel day or two to break your trip at the connecting airport. Unfortunately, stopovers on long-haul cheap tickets are problematic—especially for travelers on cheap economy tickets.

That's why the new Air France promotion is so very welcome. If I had to make a list of good choices for a stopover, Paris would be near the top. Depending on circumstances, you have your choice of a handful of airport-area hotels near de Gaulle, from which you can easily take public transportation into the city center. Or you can hop on a fast train right at the airport and stay at any of the hundreds of Paris hotels.

Air France isn't the only big line to offer a European stopover. I recently answered a question from a reader at SmarterTravel.com who wanted a London stopover on the way to Namibia. British Airways offers such stopovers—one at no extra cost, a second for $50. However, as far as I can tell, that deal doesn't apply to connecting flights to Europe, and no such deal is available on Lufthansa. Of course, you can always ticket a multi-stop trip to include as many stopovers as you want. But you usually pay a stiff penalty.

Stopover pricing sometimes defies logic. Another reader recently inquired about traveling from Honolulu to London with stopovers in both directions in New York. When I priced this itinerary as a multi-stop trip on Expedia, the lowest-priced option was on Delta and cost $1,054. This was actually a bit less than Delta quoted for a through no-stopover Honolulu-London round-trip (go figure). But that doesn't mean my reader could get "free" New York stopovers: Expedia reported the lowest through-ticket price of $854, on Lufthansa with United codeshare flight from Honolulu to the mainland, so the real cost of the stopovers would be $200.

It's hard to generalize about where and how to find stopovers, but here are a few suggestions about searching:

• Always start by pricing the exact itinerary and stopovers you want as a multi-stop trip. That's the most you'd have to pay. Check prices through one of the big multi-line search programs such as BookingBuddy, a sister site of SmarterTravel.com, to locate the best deal.
• Then, check directly with any major airline headquartered in the city where you'd prefer a stopover. As with Air France, an airline is most apt to offer a stopover promotion in its home base. You have to check with the airlines individually, because it isn't at all clear that the search engines will find special promotions.
• Travel agents sometimes know ticketing tricks for stopovers that you don't find online.

I'm firmly convinced that airlines are neglecting a big market by ignoring stopovers. I remember previous times when domestic airlines routinely offered free stopovers in Las Vegas or Miami, for example. And I suspect that some big lines would get a lot of new business—especially from seniors—by offering free East Coast stopovers on trips from the West to Europe or West Coast stopovers on trips from the East to Asia or Hawaii. But the airlines have hardly ever heeded my advice. Why should they start now?