The Extended Stopover – How To See More of the World Without Spending More!

For many years now, my family has been enjoying the benefits of the EXTENDED STOPOVER and assumed everyone knew about it. But as I have been chatting more and more about our travels recently, I realize that very few people know about this awesome travel benefit. So here it is – one of my best travel tips!

What is an extended stopover?

I am sure most everyone has had to do a stopover (also known as a flight connection) on their way to their final destination. Your luggage is checked through to your final destination, you exit the aircraft, transfer gates, wait for your next flight, and then off you go to your final stop.

What most people don’t know is that you can arrange your flights so that your stopover is extended anywhere from one to several days, even weeks! For close to the SAME PRICE as the original flight, you can book two separate flights, collect your bags at the stopover city, stay for several days in that city, and then check into your next flight to your final stop! Isn’t that amazing?!

You can visit a new city and pay no extra money to get there. All you have to do is find the flight that stops in the city you want to visit and book directly with the airline on their website. Although there are a few airlines that do not offer this service, most of the international carriers do. Also, there are times when it will cost more to book an extended stopover, but still way less than if you went to the stopover city as a main stop.

So, you want to see the Pyramids on your way back from Kenya or climb the Great Wall of China on your way to Thailand? Just follow my handy travel trick below and these amazing sights and more are yours for the taking – at no extra flight cost.

How Do I Find and Book the Flights/Stopover?

Here’s how I find and book my flights.

1. I go to Kayak.com and find the flight I want with the lowest airfare to my final destination AND one that has a new or interesting city as a stopover. Some people find Skyscanner.com works very well too, but I am a creature of habit and find Kayak.com works great. Here’s an example:

Let’s say that I want to book a flight from Los Angeles to Rome. So I search on Kayak like this:

From there I can see all the flights offered from Los Angeles (LAX) to Rome (FCO) from lowest to highest price. I see that Turkish Airlines has a great flight stopping over in Istanbul for a low price. I love Istanbul and Turkish Airlines and decide I would love a long stopover there on my way to Rome.

2. I go directly to the Turkish Airlines website and click on the MULTI CITY option, as you can see here:

3.  I fill in the page with From: LAX (Los Angeles) and To: IST (Istanbul) and the date of travel. Next, I press ADD FLIGHT and then fill in the From: IST (Istanbul) and To: FCO (Rome) with the date I want to leave. Here I chose to stay in Istanbul for one week:

4. I book the flights on the website as an e-ticket and wait for my trip!!

As you can see below, here are both my flights and the price is same as it was without the extended stopover. Most of the airlines offer the MULTI CITY button and from there you can add your stopovers. I’ve even booked flights with 2 or 3 stopovers using the ADD FLIGHT option on the MULTI CITY page. The flight options are unlimited and the prices are amazingly low for the amount of flights you can take using this trick!!

I also saw that for the return back to Los Angeles from Rome, there is a flight on Aer Lingus stopping in Dublin, Ireland. So I could do a 3-day stopover in Dublin for no extra flight price! The trick is to book a ONE WAY flight each way and try to get a different stopover in each direction. I mean as long as I am flying all the way to Europe and already paying for the flights, I can add one to two extra cities and new experiences to my trip!!

So from now on, if you want to see 2 or more new places for the price of one round trip flight, check out the connections available and book an extended stopover!!!

Do you have any other great travel tips? Please share them with us!