Twenty-two terms
What the Words in a Price Mean
Not a list of questions. An alphabetical set of the terms that will appear in a written price, each with what it is and the place it will cost you something.
A to L
- Balance date
- What it is: the day the operating company wants the rest of the money. Where it bites: miss it and most of them treat the booking as canceled by you, and the price becomes whatever is available that day
- Band
- What it is: this site's own word for how much of a trip is paid for before you leave. Where it bites: it decides what a change costs far more than the destination does
- Blackout dates
- What it is: dates a rate is not available on, whatever the headline says. Where it bites: school holidays, Holy Week, and the fortnight around the December holidays
- Bond
- What it is: money a company buys from a surety so travelers can be paid if it fails. Where it bites: this company has bought none, so no bond number appears anywhere here
- Change fee
- What it is: what an operating company charges to alter a booking, before any difference in price. Where it bites: it is charged on top of the fare difference, not instead of it
- Commission
- What it is: the share of an operating company's margin that pays this office. Where it bites: nowhere on your bill. It is inside their price whether you book here or direct
- Deposit
- What it is: the first payment, made to the operating company. Where it bites: it usually stops being refundable early, sometimes the day it is paid
- Fare difference
- What it is: the gap between what you paid and what the new dates cost. Where it bites: on a changed flight it is often larger than the change fee
- Fare rules
- What it is: the conditions attached to a specific airfare. Where it bites: the cheapest fares are frequently neither refundable nor changeable, and this is the most common unpleasant surprise in travel
- Force majeure
- What it is: the clause covering events nobody controls. Where it bites: it usually lets the operating company change or cancel without the compensation you would otherwise get
- Free price
- What it is: a figure worked out and written down at no charge. Where it bites: nowhere, which is why it is listed here as a term rather than promised as a favor
- Land only
- What it is: a figure that excludes the flight. Where it bites: every price on this site is land only, and the flight is quoted beside it rather than inside it
M to Z
- Name change
- What it is: swapping one traveler for another on a booking. Where it bites: on a tour it is often cheap and on a flight it is often impossible
- No-show
- What it is: not arriving. Where it bites: it usually voids the whole remaining booking, not just the night you missed
- Passport validity
- What it is: how long your passport must still run beyond your return. Where it bites: the issuing authority answers this and this office does not. A guess costs you the trip
- Port charges
- What it is: what a port and a government levy per passenger. Where it bites: nobody discounts them, and a fare quoted without them is not a fare
- Review
- What it is: a traveler's account, published. Where it bites: none has been collected here yet, so the count on this site is zero and stays zero until a real one arrives with permission to print it
- Seller of travel registration
- What it is: a registration California, Florida, Hawaii and Washington State require of businesses that sell travel to their residents. Where it bites: this company holds none, takes no payment, and prints no number. Printing one nobody issued is the offence, not the absence
- Shoulder season
- What it is: the weeks either side of the busy season. Where it bites: it is usually the best value in travel, and on this site it is named month by month on when it is cheaper
- Single supplement
- What it is: what one traveler pays for a room priced for two. Where it bites: every figure on this site assumes two sharing, so one traveler alone pays more, sometimes much more
- Travel insurance
- What it is: a contract between you and an insurer. Where it bites: the exclusions, and the requirement to buy early for anything you already know about
- Visa
- What it is: permission to enter, granted by the destination. Where it bites: the destination's consulate decides it. This office neither sells nor advises on visas, passports or entry rules, at any length, for anybody
- Written proposal
- What it is: the document that actually governs your trip. Where it bites: where it differs from this website, it wins
Three answers that are not terms
- Are you the cheapest? No claim is made, and no price match is offered. What is offered instead is the build-up on prices, so a figure can be compared honestly against anybody, including against booking it yourself.
- Can you sell me an all inclusive resort week? No. It is the one product that breaks this site's ladder, because it buys your meals without buying your days. It is a perfectly good holiday and it is somewhere else.
- Do I have to be in Washington? No. What matters more than where you live is which airport you start from, because everything here is priced from Washington and a different origin moves both the routing and the figure.