I have already been blogging about how to use airline miles to make your eco-tourism travel dreams come true. But what do you do when the destination you want is far away from the main gateway airport? What if you don’t have the right kind of miles to get there? Is a bus REALLY the cheapest option?
Enter ROME2RIO!
One the home page, you can enter any two destinations.
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In this example, we are going to say that we are using Star Alliance miles to visit Brazil for birding. Our final destination is the Pantanal to see the stunning Hyacinth Macaws and other birds. We will be traveling in 2015 and booking the trip in mid 2014 and TAM will have left Star Alliance to join One World.
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There are no Star Alliance options to get to Cuiaba so we can join our Pantanal tour, we need to spend money. So how do we determine the best option? Enter Sao Paulo & Cuiaba, then put in your date in the Rome2Rio search engine. We get a screen that looks like this.
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We have 4 options. You can click on any option to get further details.
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Make your choice between the non-stop or the somewhat cheaper one-stop. Either way you are arriving in Cuiaba at an inconvenient midnight-ish hour. You can then click on the flight of your choice to be directed to their website to book it.
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Beware the prices are not always accurate on Rome2Rio but at least you can click over to the airline’s website to compare.
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The main value I see in the site is comparing different modes of transport so you can make a decision if a bus is cheaper than a flight and if the difference in price is worth the longer time it would take. For example, option 1 on our Rome2Rio search query gives a total time estimate of 5 hours 17 minutes. The different components of the trip: metro, plane, taxi individually add up to 2 hours 47 minutes so the program is also allowing for time spent checking in, going through security & retrieving checked bags.
Now look at the bus option on #4 and the car option on #5. You are going from city centre to city centre so they only give the bus travel time.
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The bus will save you around $100 per person but will take you 20 hours longer to get to Cuiaba. Depending on how much time you have, this may or may not be worth it to you.
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The car option only gives the estimated cost of fuel and driving time. You need to add the cost of a rental car on to this. Then you need to work out the per person cost, compare the dollar amount to the loss of time vs flying you would have if you choose to drive. If you are not returning to Sao Paulo by car, you would also have to add the drop off fee which in Brazil can be pretty bad!
Rome2Rio is a very clever tool which can give you a lot of information you need in making decisions about what mode of transport you will take once your mileage-booked flight deposits you at the the gateway airport. You can learn more about this enterprise and their carbon offsetting program on their “About” page. Scroll down for 2 very interesting videos which explain more uses of the tool.