China - Best option for 2 week "tour" of China - Independent, Group or Agency

We are planning on moving to SE Asia this fall for 3-4 months as a hub to visit
that part of the world.

We would like to take a 2 week trip to China to start off the journey (probably 2nd half of September). US --> CHINA --> maybe Kuala Lumpur

It will be my wife and I along with our kids ages 8 and 12. We'd like to see the "popular" parts of China so we'd likely go to Bejing, Xian, Shanghai and perhaps Guilin or a short cruise on the Lin or Yangtze.

I've done a bit of research of tour companies and if we want to do this staying in 4+/5 star hotels (not super luxury) it looks like the typical 11-13 day tour will cost about $2500 per person (not including international airfare).

I have plenty of airline miles so I think I'd rather take care of my own flights to China unless it was really cheap as a part of a package.

I am not scared of doing independent travel and I did a quick calculations of the airfares and hotels and there does not seem to be much cost savings going independent over a group tour when you throw in the meals, attractions, guides, etc. I am sure the tour companies are able to get bulk discounts. I'd probably get irked at being in a large tour group but one of 20 people of less would be fine. And it would be nice to have someone take care of all the tedious work and iron out problems if/when they arise.

A third option is to find a travel agency to book the airfare and hotels for me if they could get better rates than I can on my own. I like the idea of being on our own for meals so we can seek out some of the better places.

Would appreciate any advice.

1) Watch out for holiday period at end of September and first week of October. National Day holiday week is October 1-7. This year, the Mid-Autumn Festival (lunar calendar) falls at the end of September. Back to back. Travel inside China will be pandemonium from about Sept 25 onward. Strongly suggest you move your trip to before that time, and make that outbound international by Sept 25-26, as plenty of other Chinese travelers will be taking intl trips.

2) If you want to use miles, get those tickets booked NOW. I suggest you plan a one-way routing. Ideal would be getting your award tickets to take you all the way to Xi'an (via another gateway Chinese city). Then domestic flight to Beijing, then maybe bullet train to Shanghai, then fly to Guilin. Outbound international from there or another southern Chinese city to BKK or KUL or SIN or similar. You'll have to figure out your return award routing.

3) $2500 per person for 11-13 days sounds very high--perhaps you're not comparing to the correct domestic Chinese pricing benchmarks.

4) Ditch the group tour idea, at least one purchased in your home country. Make your intl flight plans, then in the next month or two you can decide between the following options:
(a) completely independent
(b) make your own domestic flight and hotel arrangements, then have local tour/transport arranged for you in your stops...selectively.
(c) deal directly with a local Chinese agency to put together a private tour with the components you want.

I can't believe any one of the above options will cost anywhere close to $2500 per person.

5) Don't try to do too much. I think in two weeks, you can manage what you mentioned but no more. Plan on 1.5 to 2 days Xi'an, 4 days Beijing, 2 days Shanghai + 1 day for daytrip in nearby cities, 4 days Guilin/Yangshuo area, 1.5 total days (divided) for intercity travel connections. Skip the Yangtze Cruise. Skip the Li River Cruise. Go to Yangshuo and get yourself a boat or raft there, for much cheaper, to see the best parts of the river scenery in a cost-effective and fun way.

6) This is an easy routing--good infrastructure and many options. And you have come to the right place for assistance.

I've done a bit of research of tour companies and if we want to do this staying in 4+/5 star hotels (not super luxury) it looks like the typical 11-13 day tour will cost about $2500 per person (not including international airfare).


Assuming a 13/12 day/night trip, here is my rough estimate:

-24 hotel nights (you need two rooms; serviced apartments in BJ/SH could save some money here, but we're not at that level of detail yet) @$100 = $2400
-16 domestic flight/train segments @$125 (PEK-SHA-KWL-XIY-PEK) = $2000
-$150 per day for everything else (13 days) = $1950... and you'd be eating at restaurants that you chose on your own
TOTAL = $6350 or $1587.50 pp

What are your thoughts on something like this 17 night trip (mostly via train).
The price is about $1500 but it does not include food or entries to the sites.

It looks like it has more "boutique/authentic" accommodations which are ok
with us if they are clean/safe/interesting.

Do you think it covers many of the top places someone should go to?

I can't imagine trying to book all of these details on my own.

http://www.chinatravelplan.co.uk/china-by-train.htm

Is Guangzhou really worth seeing? If not we could end the trip in Guilin and fly to our hub in SE Asia from there. Or fly to Shanghai? Is there really anything special about Shanghai?

Thanks so much for your advice.

What are your thoughts on something like this 17 night trip (mostly via train).
The price is about $1500 but it does not include food or entries to the sites.

It looks like it has more "boutique/authentic" accommodations which are ok
with us if they are clean/safe/interesting.

Do you think it covers many of the top places someone should go to?

I can't imagine trying to book all of these details on my own.

http://www.chinatravelplan.co.uk/china-by-train.htm

Is Guangzhou really worth seeing? If not we could end the trip in Guilin and fly to our hub in SE Asia from there. Or fly to Shanghai? Is there really anything special about Shanghai?

Thanks so much for your advice.

Ok, new budget:

-34 hotel nights @$45 (I read their description of "level 3" and am very confident about this estimate)= $1530
-Great Wall transport = $90
-BJ-Xi'an hard sleeper y281*4 = $178
-Terracotta Warriors transport = $50
-Xi'an-Chengdu hard sleeper y191*4 = $121
-Panda transport = $50
-Chengdu-Guilin hard sleeper; I'm not seeing prices on this route, so let's call it $150 as a place holder
-Guilin-Yangshuo-Ping'an-Guilin transport = $90
-Guilin-Guangzhou hard sleeper y201*4 = $128
TOTAL = $2387 or $596.75 pp

Has anyone used a reliable "travel planners" who could assist me in booking/planning a trip like this or do I need to do it all myself?

I don't mind paying a commission but as you pointed out, I should not be paying double what it actually cost for the convenience.

Has anyone used a reliable "travel planners" who could assist me in booking/planning a trip like this or do I need to do it all myself?

I don't mind paying a commission but as you pointed out, I should not be paying double what it actually cost for the convenience.

Well, um...us. Many of the regulars know all of these places quite well, and we don't do commissions. :p What you do:

1) Firm up start and end dates into and out of China and locations with your intl award tickets. This gives the endpoints. You can do this yourself, during the next week.

2) Then layout your itinerary of cities, with your assumed time splits and proposed methods of intercity transport. Don't worry about the detail at each location yet. Put this up on this thread. Should take you about 30 minutes of thinking and typing. My post above gave you some pretty good estimates of breakdown for a 2-week trip.

3) We will tweak your itinerary and your intercity options. You can review. We will also suggest hotels in each of these locations. Please advise if you have loyalty program points you'd like to use in one or more programs...or if you will be a cash customer (limits vs no limits on the hotel universe).

4) With dates known, you can book your hotels then. For anything using the open market not points, booking using the highly reliable www.sinohotel.com or www.ctrip.com is probably best course of action. Easy to do yourself from comfort of your home. You are only talking about 4 locations you need to book. This is not rocket science nor does it take that long.

5) It's too early to book domestic Chinese flights or trains. For September, you probably want to book flights around early-mid August. Please go to our Master Transportation Thread (initial posts) and invest a few minutes in reading about domestic travel by various means. Trains are limited to 10 days in advance for ticket purchase, but there are options to pay commission and make arrangements for agent to do. Bottom line: don't worry about the linkages too much right now.

6) We can tell you what to do in each city, day by day, if that's what you want, and how to do it. In other threads on this forum, you can find suggestions for each of your proposed cities. Also, take a look at a few guidebooks and other forums. Have a family discussion and come up with the top 5 "A list" things the family wants to see/do in each city, then have a B list of priorities which may be a collection of wish-lists. We can advise on time frames and do a sanity check. In most of these places, it's easy to get around using public transport and taxis. For certain days/certain sights, it may make sense to get private transport (i.e. Great Wall). Sometime during the spring or summer on the forum, we can lay out your days to appropriate level of detail. If you want to do "guided tour" then best thing is to just arrange it by the day, using an agent (or through hotel) in that city. But only for some of your vacation days.

I think you will quickly chafe at being led around by the nose continuously, day after day, by a tour guide, especially when you see how easy it is to travel in China on this sort of routing, and do a few arrangements on your own in advance, but mostly do it as you go. China travel is geared more to immediate arrangements (or day-in-advance) and not to long-advance planning. And (you'll have to trust us on this), it's miraculous how the details just seem to fall into place. Don't build this up in your imagination, to be a Stanley-and-Livingston Africa expedition-type of logistics planning!

While jiejie's advice is spot on, allow me to simplify it for you.

-get plane tickets to China/Malaysia; swing as many true stopovers as possible
-report back to us

I have our 4 tickets on hold for RDU-PEK on October 10th. But I've got this awkward routing via Tokyo and overnighting in Hong Kong so I dont get into Beijing until the 12th. I did get First (miles on AA) but would settle for coach if it had a better route and better dates.

Ideally I'd get the ORD-PEK flight and get in closer to the 8th.

Once I firm that up I'm going to be hitting you up for a lot of advice. I checked out 3 travel guides on China from the library last night....

I have our 4 tickets on hold for RDU-PEK on October 10th. But I've got this awkward routing via Tokyo and overnighting in Hong Kong so I dont get into Beijing until the 12th. I did get First (miles on AA) but would settle for coach if it had a better route and better dates.

Ideally I'd get the ORD-PEK flight and get in closer to the 8th.

Once I firm that up I'm going to be hitting you up for a lot of advice. I checked out 3 travel guides on China from the library last night....

I have our 4 tickets on hold for RDU-PEK on October 10th. But I've got this awkward routing via Tokyo and overnighting in Hong Kong so I dont get into Beijing until the 12th. I did get First (miles on AA) but would settle for coach if it had a better route and better dates.

Ideally I'd get the ORD-PEK flight and get in closer to the 8th.

Once I firm that up I'm going to be hitting you up for a lot of advice. I checked out 3 travel guides on China from the library last night....

OK that's a start. Not the greatest of routings but maybe the direct will come through. I presume you did cover your bases with JL routings also--I'm surprised that if you could get as far as NRT, that you couldn't make the connection from NRT-PEK on JL. If you are time-limited for the entire journey, I'd definitely suck it up in coach on the direct flight, and pick up an extra day+ in China, rather than ping-pong between airports in F. Others here may feel differently about this value choice. I'm not sure your quest for award tickets on Oct 7-8 will be fruitful, as that's fairly busy on transpac with Chinese returning from intl trips at the end of the Chinese National Day holiday period, which this year is lengthened on the Sept end by the Mid-Autum Festival bumping up next to it. If you are stuck with leaving Oct 10 but can get into BJ a day earlier via direct flight, that extra day you pick up can easily be filled up with more Beijing-area stuff without changing any following plans.

Now you need to figure out your exit point/date from China, which may be based on your next intl destination. If you are aiming to end up in Southern China before exiting, One World miles are relatively useless unless you want to route through Hong Kong, which changes your itinerary ideas markedly. If you have no *A or ST miles to use, you might want to look into regional flight options paid for out of pocket from China to SE Asia, then for the return SE Asia-RDU, try your AA miles (probably routing SE Asia segment on CX to Hong Kong).

I have our 4 tickets on hold for RDU-PEK on October 10th. But I've got this awkward routing via Tokyo and overnighting in Hong Kong so I dont get into Beijing until the 12th. I did get First (miles on AA) but would settle for coach if it had a better route and better dates.

Ideally I'd get the ORD-PEK flight and get in closer to the 8th.

Once I firm that up I'm going to be hitting you up for a lot of advice. I checked out 3 travel guides on China from the library last night....

If you're using AA miles for F class, I advise you to fly CX or JL, even if the routing is sub optimal.

If you're using AA miles for F class, I advise you to fly CX or JL, even if the routing is sub optimal.

I'm with you if it was myself, but with two kids, an 18hr, one connection flight is far, far preferable to a 36hr two-three connection journey. By the second day, with extreme jetlag, they won't care what cabin they are in, and as a result, neither will you...

tb

I'm with you if it was myself, but with two kids, an 18hr, one connection flight is far, far preferable to a 36hr two-three connection journey. By the second day, with extreme jetlag, they won't care what cabin they are in, and as a result, neither will you...

tb

Exactly. That's why I also said the shortest journey with fewest connections is going to be best for this situation, even if you have to fly it in Y. However, if you can get a good JL metal connection from USA-NRT-PEK in Y, that would likely be a better experience than AA in Y ORD-PEK. I've done more NRT connections over the years than I can count, on various airlines, and I never seem to mind spending 1-4 hours there. It's quite a decent airport to transit through. HKG is quite a detour though.

Has anyone used a reliable "travel planners" who could assist me in booking/planning a trip like this or do I need to do it all myself?

I don't mind paying a commission but as you pointed out, I should not be paying double what it actually cost for the convenience.

I used the "travel planners" here on FT to help me put together my 16 days in China in Oct. 2011. Everything worked out great and the regulars here gave me fabulous useful advice, helped with hotel reservations, and even met my husband and I for dinner while in Beijing.

See the threads on my trip:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china/1094097-16-days-china-second-trip-where-should-we-go.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china/1266518-16-day-china-trip-about-begin.html

Also do a search under my name for other threads with answers to all the questions I had.

You can easily do your trip independently. Do not take a tour.

Thanks everyone.

I finally got my First Class seats from ORD to Beijing.

So, now ready to make the trip happen.

I created a new post of the cities we'd like to visit and asking for help with transportation and hotel suggestions.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china/1342659-bejing-xian-chendu-lijang-need-advice.html

deleted, will move to other thread