Traveling to Europe, what countries are least expensive?

Question

The countries I am thinking of visiting are UK, France, Germany, Holland, Italy. Which country is the least expensive to fly into? Where is the best place to purchase plane tickets?

I am flying out of LAX, Los Angeles

Answer 1

Flying from LAX, you should compare prices for London, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. These are the most popular destinations from LAX. Of course you can check out Rome too.

The difference in price should be minimal, its a question of finding a special offer. Expect a price for a return ticket to be in the neighborhood of 900 - 1200 USD including taxes.

For a special to Germany, take a look at this site:
https://www.ltu.de/docs/us/bookings/flight/summer_sale_usa_germany/index.html

They have really good fares from the West Coast to the medium-sized airports in Germany.

Websites I have seen recommended for tickets are
http://www.kayak.com
http://www.priceline.com
and as a meta search engine, http://www.sidestep.com .
I also use http://www.orbitz.com to get an idea of available fares, but it is not a good idea to book through them.

I prefer to book through the individual airline's website anyway. It is usually cheaper and often the only way to get a "forking" flight. A "forking flight" is a flight route that gets you to London on your way out and flies you back home from Paris or Rome. These forking flight tickets can sometimes be cheaper than a regular ticket, but you need to inquire directly with the airline or through a very big travel agency that can combine two one-way tickets.

Also look at RTW-tickets:
http://wikitravel.org/en/Round_the_world_flights

The cheapest RTW's start at only 1400 USD, so for around 300 USD more you can include Bangkok or Tokio into your trip.

If you want more "exotic" destinations in Europe than the cities you mentioned, get a flight to the big hubs anyway and then grab a budget flight. For these budget flights within Europe use http://www.skyscanner.net
Again, book through the individual airline's website, not through skyscanner.

If cost is a concern for your trip, consider that a trip to London or the UK is approximately 20% more expensive than a trip to the rest of Europe. Paris and the French Cote d'Azur or Tuscany in Italy come a close second, though.

Answer 2

From your list of countries I think that Germany would be the cheapest to fly into. Their own airlines (www.hlx.com, www.germanwings.com) are pretty cheap to use to get around the rest of Europe. You can just buy those tickets online.

Other countries that will be cheaper because they're not on the euro are Croatia, Bosnia and Albania. Or others like Romania, Turkey or Macendonia if you want to see something cheap and different once you're there.

Answer 3

Actually the least expensive place u forgot to list is Prague,Czech Republic.It doesnt use euro's so things are rather affordable there,They are still using czk ( Czech koruna ).London is of coz expensive due to the currency exchange.But then again, u can go visit all the countries u have mentioned by budget flights.Its always cheaper to book ahead of time,prices go up when ure close to the departure date.Hope it helps.U can check Prague out,it wud be worth ur while.Cheers! :)

Answer 4

They say the further east and south you travel in europe the cheaper it is.

Try skyscanner.net. This website has lots of the cheaper airlines (like easyjet, ryanair, etc) but it has others to and you can see which days are actually cheaper on a graph (when you select a month)...its really good.

Answer 5

Really depends where you are coming from. For me it was very cheap to fly direct to Amsterdam, but I live in Minneapolis which is a NWA/ KLM hub. I suggest just surfing websites like expedia, travelocity etc. Otherwise let us know where your coming from.

Answer 6

Kind of hard to answer without knowing where you're flying from.

Can you edit your question to add this? If so, you'll get better quality answers, instead of just guesses.

Answer 7

Try a travel group, it might end up being cheaper and safer for you.