Booking different classes on a flight+hotel booking
 

The problem: I want to book WT outbound and WT+ inbound without a Saturday night stay, without having to pay the full price fares.

How I've managed this in the past is to add a hotel to the booking, opening up the discount fare buckets. I'd set up my flight itinerary on BA.com, get quoted £2,000, and then add a hotel when prompted. This usually halves the price as the booking class changed when the hotel was added. However, as of a couple of months ago this no longer works: when adding a hotel the booking class stays the same and the price is crazy.

Creating a flight+hotel booking from scratch on BA.com is no help either as you can't mix and match cabins when choosing flights.

Is there any site that will let me do a flight+hotel booking with different cabins on the out and return flights? Or will I have to phone BA? And if I do phone BA, will the usual trick of adding a hotel to avoid the full price fare work?

Call BA and they should be able to do this.

Welcome to Flyertalk popmagnet
 

Welcome to Flyertalk popmagnet, welcome to the BA forum. It's good to see you here, please make yourself at home and I hope you will continue to be active here. The BA Holidays online screens are a bit basic and haven't been updated as much as the rest of BAEC. I would certainly call in, but it may be best to call the specific BA Holidays menu option, since the staff there will be fully familiar with how their products generate efficient savings of flights, and will be able to sort it out for you. Clearly doing some dummy bookings with both classes will give a clue as to what to expect. Welcome on board.

add it in MMB afterwards?
 

Welcome.

I haven't done this with hotels, but have done with cars and can say for sure the math works.

If you book package, you don't benefit from the option of hand-baggage-only fares... so can't do HBO+car. I've test-booked this a few different ways and the end result price comes out same: book the airfare, then go to MMB and add the car.

Caveat that the car bit is cheaper and probably simpler for the pricing computers than the hotels... so I'd be interested to hear if you got the same result, if you try it. I was happy enough to experiment since the difference was only ten or twenty either way.

Does the car/hotel trick still work? Trying various dates in January BOS-LHR and not seeming to generate the savings I've seen before.

I had some luck booking a package in one class and then calling to upgrade one way. Granted, I didn't know what I was doing at the time but still! I called during a sale and the adviser told me that a margin that is usually calculated and added on automatically wasn't being added and so I managed to book a WT to WT+ upgrade in one direction long haul for £83 each, when the difference between WT and WT+ booking flight only on the website was £381 each.

I also had luck a couple of days ago booking a fly drive long-haul from EDI- package price for WT+ return plus 14 days large car hire was was sub £1,900 for two whereas the WT+ flights from London only with no domestic connection and no car were over £2k. Was pleased to get my hire car and connecting flights for what seemed to be a reasonable price.