Seat sales to LA, NY, Boston and more are extended

FRIDAY, FEB. 3: It’s the Super Bowl of travel information.

I’m talking about the Travel Mart on Saturday at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess.

Sponsored by C Travel, this has some of the major players in the industry there for you to meet, ask questions and possibly win some great prizes.

Airlines participating include, American US Airways, WestJet and Air Canada.

The cruise lines participating is an impressive list with Celebrity, Azamara, Cunard, Disney, Oceania, Princess, Regent Seven Seas, Seabourn, Silversea and Royal Caribbean.

There will over 15 additional vendors including hotel groups and tour groups.Several of the participating groups will be giving discounts or credits if you make a booking between February 4 to 10.

Of course, one of the highlights is the raffle in which cruises, airline tickets and tours will be given away.

The Travel Mart takes place from 10am to 3pm. I’ll definitely be there early in the morning.

If you bump into me, please say ‘hi.’

Seat sale

Delta, Continental (United) and US Airways have extended their seat sale until February 8 and return travel must be by March 5.

Cities on sale include Boston, Las Vegas, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

The lowest fares on a round trip ticket from Bermuda to Philly (including taxes and fees) is $351.20 for a February 15 to 22 trip.

Using those same dates, Boston prices out at $338.30.

And, drum roll please, New York comes in at less than $300 on American.

Okay, barely under at $299.20, but still under.

If you were thinking about taking a trip during the next month, this should be an incentive to book one and take advantage of the low fares.

Pricing

If you’ve gone to Expedia, Travelocity or one of the US airline websites recently, you’ve probably noticed a very pleasant change — when you go to check on prices it gives you the full price, including taxes and airport fees. That’s because of the new US law which went into effect in January mandating that the ‘real’ price be advertised.

Prior to this you would often see flights advertised as $99* but when you go to investigate it was $99 one way and didn’t include taxes so by the time you added in the round trip ticket and taxes the actual cost of the ticket was more like $350.

It’s a great move for the consumer.

Choosing your seatmate

Would you pay extra money to choose who gets to sit next to you?

I’ve never had anyone obnoxious sit to me on a flight, so its not a big issue to me.

But Dutch airline KLM will be starting a programme where you can choose your seatmate via Facebook or Linkedin.

If KLM is successful with this, it’s not too difficult to see this as another avenue airlines can use to try to squeeze a few extra bucks out of passengers as they get to pick who they sit next to on that four-hour flight.

KLM says its not intended as a dating tool, but I can immediately see guys using this to try and arrange they sit next to the hottest looking woman on the plane.