ckjmglee

One additional piece of info:

For the ctrip bookings, I wound up paying a 3% surcharge to ctrip for using a US based CC and my Visa provider also charged a 3% foreign transaction fee... 6% in total

The Expedia bookings (also for travel within China) did not have the 3% foreign transaction fee - even though the charges are listed as "Air China" and "China Eastern"...

moondog

What exchange rate did they give you? (I'm guessing that you still paid 3% or more.)

ckjmglee

I comparison shopped both ctrip and Expedia when booking the China intra country flights. The fare & taxes selected from the Expedia chosen flights were pretty much identical between to ctrip (perhaps a few pennies of fluctuation, but not more). I converted the ctrip fares using that day's exchange rate as I was expecting lower fares from ctrip. Said another way, I was surprised to find flights priced at parity on Expedia...

No exchange rate charge or foreign exchange rate fee via the Expedia transaction...

tauphi

I presume Expedia priced it in USD, so no FX fee.

moondog

If you know the price of the ticket (in RMB), it's pretty easy to figure out what fx rate Expedia used.

tauphi

If Expedia gave the same or lower price vs. Ctrip then it's obviously better to take that if you have a USD credit card.

Unfortunately this would appear to be the exception rather than the rule. I just tried a random one-way booking for PVG/SHA to SZX and the cheapest I see on Expedia is USD219 while Ctrip gives RMB550.

moondog

AFIK, Expedia only sells full fare tickets. BTW, I just did a dummy booking myself and their exchange rate is good (~6.82).

ckjmglee

We, unfortunately, just didn't have the flexibility and wound having to buy a few full fare tickets. However, overall airfares for traveling within China are much lower than comparable distance travel in the US making full fare in China very reasonable (kids under 11 also enjoy significant discounts on full fare and other tickets).

It would have been nice to have more flexibility as some of the discounted fares on ctrip are pretty incredible!

Another piece of info - certain airlines that bookable on ctrip just don't show up on Expedia - Hong Kong Airlines and Shanghai Airlines are two examples... ctrip gives a much better look at the overall market.

dsquared37

I've made dummy bookings with Ctrip and had no problems, just never pulled the trigger. Today I'm finding, when searching for 2 PAX, it will only search for 1.

It only shows the cost of 1 ticket, only allows entry of 1 name.

Is this a glitch on my side or is anyone else finding something similar?

rdchen

There is an "Add passenger" option once you logged into your ctrip account.

bgwwlm

I actually saw a fare a couple weeks ago (on the Chinese website) that clearly stated it was limited to certain people; upon closer inspection, only people with one of a list of certain Chinese government-issued credentials could use the fare, effectively limiting it to PRC nationals. I very rarely see fares like this, though.

Other fares are reduced rates especially for Chinese students who are studying abroad (presumably to allow them to come home?).

The ctrip website occasionally has odd hiccups in general; they usually go away if you wait a while before returning to the website.

dsquared37

I found this out shortly after making the post. Felt like an idiot when I realized the solution.

That's what alot of flying will do to you apparently.

THanks for the answer though.

Helen123

I have used Ctrip to book domestic china tickets several times already. And, yes, they allow you to add passenger and had no problem booking ticket for myself and my better half. Also, they used to only accept Visa/Mastercard (for oversea cards), but found out recently they also add Amex too (nice)!

Also, wanted to mention they now offer "Car pickup/dropoff" service on their site as well. However, the English version doesn't seem to work?.. My friend was able to book thru the chinese version for us. The fare quote is abit higher than taxi fare but more reasonable than hotel car.

overseastar

I've actually never heard of CTRIP before until recent months when I need to book round-trip tickets between Hong Kong and Xi'an. It's definitely worth using CTRIP in terms of price.

Booking round-trip tickets on Expedia would cost me 592 CAD, I was able to purchase the same tickets for 446 CAD from CTRIP, saving me 150 bucks. For those who know people in Hong Kong, it's also worth booking tickets from TA there because it would have only cost 370 CAD, even greater savings. I wasn't able to find a Hong Kong TA online that allow ppl from overseas to book flight tickets online through them. So I went with CTRIP.

CTRIP gave me a scare a few weeks ago when they sent me an email that says "No.xxxxxxxxx flight changed, pls call 400 619 9999 asap". It sounded urgent with the "asap" and I thought my tickets were canceled. Eek! I called the number a few hours later when their office opened, and found out that it was only because both my flights were delayed by 15-30 minutes, and they wanted me to confirm that I still want those tickets. LMAO. All was good. The girl on the line was knowledgeable and her English was understandable

RichardInSF

Farrington Travel in HK, owned by Amex, is a reliable discount ticket seller who will deal with you via phone and the web from outside HK. I have no connection with them except as a repeat customer.

http://www.amextravel.com.hk/corp/