Planning my Trip to Kitzbühel

It seems like ages until the 2014 European Triathlon Championships in Kitzbühel next June, but hotel rooms seem to be selling out quickly and everyone seems to have booked their trips, so I thought I’d better get on with it as well. I’m sure I could get cheaper deals by leaving it until the last minute, but I don’t have the nerve for that and would much rather have all my travel plans sorted well in advance.

I did pop into the travel agents in Aberystwyth to see what deals they could come up with, but it seems to me that all travel agents do these days is look things up on the web in much the same way as I can. The only difference being that they only look at one or two sites that they operate with rather than a whole slew of sites like I can. Needless to say they couldn’t find any better offers than I had found and actually had trouble finding anything that would be suitable for the dates that I needed. The fact that my race is on the Friday didn’t help as most of the deals they could find were for Saturday – Saturday dates. Really I need to be in Kitzbühel on the Wednesday so that I can register and get ready to race on the Friday and then attend the closing ceremonies and such like on the Sunday, followed by a day or two relaxing in the Alps.

I did even try Nirvana, the independent travel agents that are the preferred travel partners of the British Triathlon Federation. We travelled with them to the World Champs in Auckland last year, they were a little more expensive than what we could have sorted ourselves but for such a long-haul detonation we thought it worthwhile paying a little more for the peace of mind. We couldn’t actually find many deals to Auckland  much cheaper anyway. That wasn’t the case for my trip to Turkey this year though where Nirvana were getting on for twice the price of a cheap and cheerful package deal through Thomas Cook. Once again, for the trip to Kitzbühel, Nirvana didn’t prove much help. They didn’t seem too keen to put much effort into helping me find something a little cheaper than they were offering as their standard packages. The best accommodation deal they could find in Kitzbühel was £109 per night for B&B. That would be £763 for 7 nights, on top of which would be £138 for the flights, £70 for my bike on the plane and £80 for the airport transfers. That’s a grand total of £1051 for 7 nights B&B in Kitzbühel… Almost as much as we paid for flights, transfer and 7 nights in a plush hotel in Auckland!

I couldn’t afford that so we looked up flights and accommodation ourselves. We could find flights on suitable days for just over £100 and B&B accommodation from around £410 for the 7 nights. However, booking these things separately becomes difficult when you want to add on bikes and transfers and such like. In the end, we gave Crystal Summer a ring as they seemed to have some good package deals. They had a package that included flights from Manchester, transfers and half-board accommodation in what looks like a very nice 4* hotel. They were really helpful and the chap we had on the phone seemed to know the exact hotel we wanted fairly well, having lived in Kitzbuhel himself for a couple of years. He said he even knew the owners and that keeping my bike in the hotel room wouldn’t be a problem.

The cost of the package was £614, a little more than we would have paid if we organised everything separately but not a lot, and we do still have to phone the airline to book the bike onto the flight which should cost around £35 extra. Apparently we can’t book the bike onto the flight until 90 days before my return travel date though, which just so happens to be the day after the final payment for the entire trip is due. The airline have said that it will definitely be able to go on the flight though so we should be OK. Even with the cost of the bike as excess baggage on the flight the total cost is still over £400 cheaper than the best Nirvana could come up with.

So thats it, my trip is all booked, I am off to the European Triathlon Championship in Kitzbühel next June in an attempt to defend my title!

2 Responses

  1. Avatar forComment Author Anna says:

    I like the way you imply you sorted this out all on your own. In reality you told me what you wanted and I sorted it out for you!

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.