Travel Planning as a Virtual Assistant: Flights, Accommodation

1. Introduction to Travel Planning: So travel planning includes anything from booking a flight to booking a hotel or other type of accommodation to booking a car rental to finding the destination your client would be interested to go to or even making itineraries. The offerings for this could be very different for every virtual assistant as well, anything you're comfortable with. But what I'm going to show you somewhere down there is how to book flights with my favorite platforms, which are kayak Skyscanner, and then I'm going to also show you how to book accommodation through booking or Airbnb. 2. How to Book Flights with Skyscanner as a Virtual Assistant: So the first website that we're going to be exploring is Skyscanner. I'm not sure if you heard about it before or not. If you haven't, Skyscanner is a very handy website to use to look up for flights, hotels, and car hires. In my personal experience, I usually just use it for the flights. The reason why I use it is because it provides quite a bit of options, and I don't need to go into individual airlines websites to look for them. So it gives you all the available options for the flights, including the connecting flights, direct flights, basically any flights you could think of. So yeah, as with any other airline in the search bar, you're going to see the from options. So your starting point, you're also going to have a destination, departure date, return date, and then you're also going to have to select the travelers and the cabin class you prefer. The useful thing with sky scanner is that you can also select at nearby airport to your search. That means that you're going to also see the options, for example, in my case, let's say, flying from Malaga and returning to Sevelas airport, right, something that is still quite close to me. For perhaps a cheaper price, and perhaps I would like that option better, right? So you can choose this option for both your starting point and your destination. And you also have an option to choose the direct flights only if you don't want a connecting flight. Another very useful function with sky scanner is that let's say if your client asks you to find a good destination for their travels, their holiday in, let's say, three months time and they don't really know where they want to go, you have an option to choose explore everywhere. What does that mean? That means that you're going to have all the options available for you to all the countries for the dates you picked up. So let's just try it out as well right now. Oh. So as you can see, if I choose everywhere as my destination, I'm going to see multiple countries appearing and I can just choose. And I can select any country that looks attractive to me. So let's say, if I want to go to Portugal, I would just click Portugal, and then I would see all the flights available to the Portuguese towns and cities. So let's say we're going to Porto, we just simply click on this little arrow, and I'm going to be shown all the flights. Another useful thing to know with sky scanner that in case you don't have a preference for the airport. Let's say you live in a very small country, so it doesn't matter which airport to fly from. You could also choose the entire country. So let's say, Spain, that's not the best example, but just to show you this functionality. And let's say I want to go to Portugal, but I don't know which town. I would just enter Portugal over here. And once again, clicking on the arrow, you would see all the options available, and you could see the departure locations, the airports you could fly from so now I selected a very short flight, and there's not many options available for me. There's only this one, but usually would have multiple options available. You could also choose from the stop. So let's say you want only daybreak, or you wouldn't mind flights with one stop or two stops even. And then you could also select the departure time. So let's say your client doesn't want to have a really early flight. They can only fly from 11:00 A.M. And they want to return, let's say, before 7:00 P.M. And you could also choose the journey duration. The airline if you have a preferred one and basically fill everything like that. You also have the SR pie option, so showing you the best, the cheapest, first, fastest, first, um and other ones. You also have an option to explore other dates. So let's say if you're more flexible, you can just go ahead and explore other dates, let's say, 2 February, basically compare the prices and understand which dates would work a little bit better. And once you found a flight that you like, we just click Select. And you would also see the flight details. So again, the airports, the flight duration, the airlines, on the left side, as you can see, you also see the prices on other websites. So whether you would buy directly from Ryanair or if you would buy from other websites as well. So if you decide to buy directly from the airline, you would simply click on Select once again and be redirected to RNair's page. You won't need to do anything else. Everything is going to be already filtered for you. You're just simply going to need to select the flights once again and complete all the information over here. So this is how you do it. 3. Finding the Best Flights Using Kayak: So another website we're going to be exploring is Kayak. Kayak is very similar to sky scanner. You can look up flights, stays, cars, or even packages over here. And Kayak has very similar functionalities to sky scanner. But I also find that some filters and some functionalities are a bit different and even more convenient on kayak. So it's very interesting to compare both of these websites and see what they can offer. So let's just get started. We're going to be looking for flights, once again, just as an example. And as you can see, from the search bar is pretty straightforward. You just have the starting point, your destination, the dates, the number of travelers and the class you want to travel in. The options that you also have available is if you're looking for round trip or whether you're looking for one way or even multi city, meaning that you're traveling, let's say, me right now from Malaga to Palma de Majorca, and then coming back to Sevilla, that would be possible as well by selecting multi city option. Then we can also choose if we want a carry on bag and how much that would cost, as well, or do we need any checked in bags? So that just um makes it easier for us to filter everything beforehand. And I don't know if I mentioned this already or not. You can also filter out the direct flights only. If you don't mind a connecting flight and stopping, you can just leave it blank for now. So if I'm happy with that, I would just select search button, and I would be provided the options that Kayak has. Another thing about kayak, very similar to sky scanner is that if you don't know the city you want to fly in, you can also select the country and just look up the options for the entire country. And for the dates as well, you have, as you can see, it, color coded, meaning that the green ones are the cheapest days, the yellow ones are average, and the red ones are the most expensive. So you can just see which ones would work the best for you. Besides that, you also have an option to filter the entire month so let me just give you an example. Let's say your client wants to travel to Italy for a week in March, and they haven't mentioned any specific particular dates. You can just explore which dates are the cheapest perhaps, which dates would be the most convenient. So you could just simply select the month option and change the duration the preferred one. In this case, that would be seven days, and you could simply go ahead and filter the options. Another thing, if you don't have particular dates in mind, but you can still allow some flexibility. There's an option over here for departure and return flights. You can select them to be the exact dates from the first to eight of March, or you could even allow some flexibility. Let's say we can spare three days here and there, two days here and there, one day here and there. You could simply select that and see if the flight from, I don't know, February 28 or March 2 would be the cheaper one, right? So if you have that flexibility, also use this function. It's very handy. Once you click on the search bar, all the options are going to be provided as mentioned before. On the left side, you're going to see even more filters, literally anything you can imagine, so you have the stops option. You can once again, if you haven't selected back before, you can select it here. You can update the time for departure and for landing. You can select the airlines if you have any preferred ones. Um duration of the flight, the price, et cetera, anything you can imagine. Once you find the deal you're happy with, you can simply click on View Deal, and you're going to be redirected to the website of the providers. So in this case, it was Ryanair themselves. If you click on this little arrow over here, you're also going to be able to compare the prices. Again, very similar to sky scanner. So how much it would be buying from Ryanair directly and how much it would be buying from the third party. I always recommend buying from the airline, if possible, directly. It's easier to cancel, reschedule, or if your flight gets canceled to get back the refund or the credit rather than having like a third party to deal with. But going back to the Rinair, once again, you're going to have all the dates and everything set up for you. As you filtered on kayak already. A you'll need to do is again select the flights and fill in all the information. But yes going back to kayak. You also have, of course, an option to filter from the cheapest, quickest and best flights. You can also get automatic alerts for the prices whenever they change, go down up, et cetera. So I would just recommend going here and exploring all the filters and all the options available on kayak. 4. Booking Client Accommodations on Airbnb: Another website, which I'm going to show you how to use is Airbnb. Once again, is a quite popular website to use when booking apartments, homestys. Usually wouldn't find hotels on Airbnb is mainly just apartment and all different stays you could think of. So let's get started. Once you are on Airbnb website, you're going to see a function to explore stays and experiences. Stays are, of course, apartments and homes stays to choose from and experiences speak for themselves are different experiences such as food tours, perhaps boat tours, perhaps some yoga classes, wine tasting, et cetera, so different experiences that you could be exploring when visiting a certain destination. As you can see, we have quite a bit of options to choose from. You also have a filters option over here, but you can also explore it based on the destination and the dates and the guest you're going with. So let's get started. I'm going to be looking for stays for the destination. For the sake of this example, I'm just going to be choosing Barcelona, the check in dates, once again, similar to literally all the website we've been exploring Skyscanner kayak. And booking.com. You have an option to be flexible, so stay for a month, a weekend and basically any months you would prefer. You can also choose your preferred exact dates. So let me just choose a few days in February, and you can also choose from either exact dates or allow a few days here and there. So let me just also click that right now. Once you are happy with the check in checkout ds, select the number of people you're going to be going. So let's say we're looking for an accommodation for two adults. So once we're happy with our search, we just hit Enter and we're going to be presented all the options. So on the left side, you can see everything that popped up based on the information we provided Airbnb. You can also see that we're shown a map, which makes it a little bit easier for us to see how far the apartments are located from perhaps city center or certain attractions or if we prefer one type of a neighborhood, we can also select that. Before we go ahead and explore accommodations, I would always recommend to filter it further. So perhaps your client is coming with a pet or they once again need a free parking, or they prefer a self check in. Let's say we need a parking and we also need a self check in. You can also choose from three types of um accommodation. So whether you need only a room or the entire place or it really doesn't matter for you. In this case, I'm just going to choose entire home. And then, of course, you can choose the price range, whichever you prefer, the bedrooms, beds, bathrooms, et cetera, the amenities, if there's something very, very important for you to have and you can also choose from standout stays so stays that were guest favorites or luxury homes as well. If that's your preference. You also have a host language. I mean, majority of them speak English, of course, but if you have preferred language, you can choose that. So once you have everything set, you just click on Show Homes, and you're going to see all the options that are available for you for these days for two guests in Barcelona. So over here, we're going to be seeing the price per night, and over here, we're going to be seeing the total. But Airbnb, it's extremely important to read the reviews and make sure that the apartment accommodation actually has sufficient reviews to begin with. We don't want to send our clients to an unknown place. I also usually tend to choose from super host as well because that just makes me extra secure and confident. That I'm booking something extremely good for my client. Let's just say that. And another thing with Airbnb, I'm not sure if you know this already or not. Perhaps you've already seen some tips and tricks on Airbnb previously, but you can actually text the host prior to booking. So let's say, if you're staying with them or you're planning to stay with them for more than a week, let's say, two, three weeks or something, right? You could also just get in touch with them and negotiate the price. They can create discount code for you to secure a booking with for a lower price. So it's always nice to try it out and see if the host agrees with it. You can also just text the ghost and ask them any questions that you or your client may have prior to booking the stay. So make sure that everything is set and good to go for you. Once you've chosen the accommodation you like, you can explore the pictures, of course, read all of the reviews, see more information about the place and how everything works. See, of course, the amenities and everything else. If that's right with you and you want to reserve it, you can simply just click on Reserve. Once you click on Reserve, you're going to be able to enter your payment details and book your stay. 5. Booking Client Stays on Booking.com: So another website which I'm excited to show you is booking.com. If you've used booking before, and you know everything about it, you can simply skip this lesson, but if you want to learn a little bit more about it, you haven't used it before, or you've used it, but perhaps you want to learn a little bit more, just keep watching. So on booking.com, it is mostly known for booking stays, but they also have an option for for the combination of a flight and a hotel, for car rental attractions and even airport taxis. So just keep that in mind when booking a trip for your client or yourself. I mostly use booking for looking for stays and also for car rentals. Stays is self explanatory. Booking literally has everything you could think of car rentals, I discovered it quite recently when booking thrips for myself that sometimes car rentals through booking.com are way cheaper than even booking the same car from the same car hire directly. So yeah, it is very interesting to see, and I think you should keep an eye on this as well in the future if looking for a car rental. So let's get started. If you're looking for a stay, you're going to simply need to select stays, and then you're going to be shown the following filters. So you're going to have the city or the country you want to stay in the check in and checkout days, the number of people staying, the rooms you need to book up, et cetera. So let me just put something here just to show you how everything works. So let's say I'm looking for a one bedroom apartment or a hotel for one person in Malaga Spain. And you can also, of course, select I'm looking for an entire home or apartment. If that's your preference, you can also select I'm looking for flights as well to get those flight options shown to you. I'm just going to keep it with the days only for the date, if you know the exact days, you can select them. If you don't, similar to sky scanner or kayak, you also have an option for some flexibility, so you can go and be completely flexible and just say that you want to travel somewhere in May or April, or you could also just select one month you don't have that flexibility, don't worry. You also have these options available over here. So if you selected some dates, let's say, February 3 to ninth, and you can just allow one or two days here and there, you can just select that option as well. This is going to show you the dates, let's say, from February 5 to 11th or from February 4 to 11, et cetera, it's just going to show you basically a similar duration, but perhaps a more attractive price. So let's look it up. This is what you're going to be seeing in front of you. You also have the filters over here. An important thing to know about booking is that booking has a mobile price and a website price. So right now I'm looking at all of the apartments and hotels from the web from my laptop. So the price are what I'm seeing right now. But if I would look up the same hotels, the same apartments from iPhone, the price may be lower. So all the time, when looking for a hotel or an apartment, double check the web and double check the phone as well to see which price is the most attractive for you. So let's get back to the filters. You have the filter for the price. It's usually per night. You can also select from one of these more popular filters. They also have some AI available right now, which is something new and exciting to make our stays even more personalized. But yeah, then you have the property type options. So, let's say, perhaps your client doesn't want to stay in an apartment. They only want to stay in a hotel. You can simply select hotels only. Then if you want how many bedrooms do you want? How many bathrooms do you want? Perhaps you need certain facilities available, such as 24 hour front desk or a parking. Perhaps your client is coming with a car, so they need that to be available. Then, of course, you can also filter the meals. Perhaps you want to book a hotel with breakfast included. So it's more convenient for your client. You can select that option. You can also sort it out by reviews. The function that I also use quite a lot, I usually look for anything above eight. But yeah, also highly depends on the price, right? So yeah, once I have that sorted, I have room facilities, property rating, neighborhood. If you already are super familiar with the town, city, your client, or you are going to, you can also select that. Um to see the restoration policy as well. This is extremely useful if you're booking for your client. Usually want to keep that flexibility available. So I would usually recommend booking with free cancellation option. So you can cancel a few days till the actual stay and just avoid any issues for your client. Going back the distance from the city center, beachfront, bed preference, literally anything you could think of once I selected these filters, I can explore my options by just scrolling down below. I can also explore my options on the map if that's my preference. I prefer exploring on the map, as well. It just gives me a better understanding where the hotel is located and how far from everything is it. But if you don't prefer exploring on the map, you can just go ahead and explore all your options once again by scrolling down. Always keep an eye on is the distance from usually beach or city center, whichever preferences I have for my client or myself. I also, of course, look at the reviews, and I read them through, especially the negative ones just understand what went wrong, and perhaps once again, avoid it as much as possible for my client. Once we are more familiar with our clients and once we know their preferences, this is what is best to do. At least in my opinion, once you find a suitable option, all you need to do is click on C availability, then you're going to be redirected to another page. With more information, so information and prices over here, I can see the pricing. I can see what is included. I can see the type of the room, right? I can also read the description of the hotel, how far it is from, let's say, the City Center, beach, I don't know, airport, the popular facilities that they have or anything else that I want to know about them. Once you found the option that you like, you simply click on Select room, change it to one, and click on IL Reserve. You can see what is included once again, and you're going to be redirected to complete other steps including filling in your information and other details, but that's pretty straightforward. So this is how you could use booking once again, if you selected a flexible cancellation option, it's going to be very easy for you to cancel, so make sure you do that, especially for your clients. Once again, I would just recommend familiarizing yourself with the website and how it works and just exploring all the functionalities available over here so you can find better deals.