My aunt and uncle used to live in Port Blair, and have told me that the Andamans are absolutely worth visiting. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make the trip while they were there. I gather that the tourism infrastructure is still relatively underdeveloped.

Need Suggestion about Andaman Trip!
 

Hello everybody, first time here taking suggestion from you, hope you people will give right suggestion.

I am planing to travel Andaman in Feb and March in 2014, my trip will be at least 7 days. The question is I am planing travel myself that means without taking help of any tour-operator. I wanna book air ticket and hotel through online.

Is it good to book everything by myself or i want take help of tour operator.

Check tripadvisor for which hotel, and search kayak.com or expedia or whatever for the airfare. You will need a visa to get to india - search google for your nearest indian consulate.

Pretty easy to do it yourself. You'll need to get yourself to Port Blair for starters, which will involve a domestic flight from one of the main Indian gateways (Chennai tends to be cheapest and with decent schedules but YMMV).

It may be easier to buy the mainland to Andaman flight separately, with a stopover on the mainland - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veer_Sa...tional_Airport for a list of airlines and routes. The Indian LCCs, particularly SpiceJet and IndiGo, are pretty decent in my experience.

Have a look at this trip report for some recent experience - skip the bit about the flight from London to get to the detail.

where will you be flying in from????

Going slightly off topic aren't the Indian government missing a trick by not trying to attract tourists to these islands directly from Malaysia and the region by allowing direct flights, instead of via Indian mainland?

Should visits to these islands be visa free? Even Iran allows visa free travel to Kish Island.

Has this been considered already?

make sure you get the right visa too - you have to get an additional endorsement for visiting andaman islands

You can get the Restricted Area Permit on arrival at Port Blair airport.

Booking hotels/tour packages in Andaman using miles and points
 

Hi Everyone,

I am planning a trip with my better half to Andaman for 5 days. I'm looking for ways to pay for a (luxury) hotel + activities with points. Does anyone have experience of booking such activities with points?

I have 30k aadvantage, 7k ultimate rewards, 50k amex membership rewards, and 15k JetPrivilege points. I have considered and discarded the following ideas:

1. Buying airbnb vouchers
2. Using miles for budget hotels. If we need to stay in one, it probably makes sense to just use the card and preserve the points for bigger and better things.

Specifically, is there a way to use any of the points above for ITC?

Do UR or MR points transfer to Starwood? If so, Starwood partners with ITC.

not all itc properties....just the ones that are part of luxury collection....

UR can be changed to SPG. The issue is, I have changed my CSP card to Freedom to avoid the annual fee. And MR has a terrible conversion rate.

What I'm thinking of doing is booking a budget hotel using agoda.com and raking in a few AAdvantage or JP Miles

Any international flights to Port Blair (IXZ), Andamans?
 

Looks like the airport is an international one, but I can't seem to find any flights to other countries. Since the islands are so close to other holiday spots like Thailand and Singapore, I'm surprised this is still not possible. Anyone know if the govt is restricting this or airlines don't think it will be profitable?

Andaman is a strategic/naval base for India plus there are lots of indigenous tribes etc. there that India has left generally undisturbed. So probably of combination of everything. There are very few flights today to IXZ But this probably more than double what it was a few years ago.

I can't remember IXZ ever having allowed international flights.