With BA, I gather that many routes require a Saturday night away to get the cheap Club Europe bookings. If you don't have that, then only the more expensive fare buckets show up. However, adding a Hotel or a Car Hire can avoid that issue, especially for longer stays. I've just had a look at Heathrow to Madrid, and in Club Europe for Tuesday pm to Saturday pm, it's pricing up at about 800 quid. Heathrow to Madrid with the cheapest hotel available drops it to a more reasonable 380 quid, for my dates. The issue is that I'm going to somewhere a train ride away from Madrid. I'm going to need a hotel there anyway, so a flight + hotel booking avoiding the CE saturday night rule could work out quite well, and could let me get Club Europe in budget. However, I can't seem to get the BA holiday finder to let me search for hotels in where I'm going but with flights in/out of Madrid, because it won't find the place into the auto-complete box. Expedia knows about the city I'm off to, but refuses to find me any flight+hotel options. Anyone know a good site for booking flight + not very near hotel bookings? I'm not trying to cheat by buying flights to Madrid but a cheap hostel in Bali here! I just need to be able to book a hotel a hundred odd miles away and in the same country (Otherwise booking flights + car hire that I never collect might be an option, but I think flight + hotel I actually use should be cheaper!)
Interesting issue. I'm not sure it can be done, at least via BA. Presumably in Madrid you just want to stay somewhere else as I do know that BA will let you book a single night at the destination, irrespective of the length of time between flights.
BA will let me book a single Madrid night on a holiday booking, but alas it pushes the flights pretty much back to the non-holiday cost. It seems it needs to be a car hire or hotel booking for the whole trip to unlock the cheaper holiday prices
I think I misread your original, thinking you were starting in Madrid for a few nights then heading elsewhere. I would go for the flight + car maybe, and actually drive there. Or just play the POUG game. My recent Barcelona flights have been offered in the 100-120 euro range for the upgrade.
Thanks to a pointer from FlyerTalk, I've discovered it can be done on the BA website! You need to use a feature I hadn't noticed before - "Customise Your Trip" If you head to "Customise Your Trip", then search on that page for flights+hotel to Madrid with "Multiple hotels" option picked. On the hotels screen, the places search box knows about more places than other bits of the website! On there, I can find and pick where I'm actually going. On that hotels screen, need to pick check in and check out dates matching the flights, don't add another hotel, then get prices. It only shows about a quarter of the number of hotels that Expedia or similar shows for a hotel-only booking for my destination, but it does work out a fair bit cheaper than CE flight+hire car to Madrid plus separate hotel booking
