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You've checked Opodo and
Kayak and the other
sites listed on TTP's Cheap
Airfares page, you've
found a wonderfully cheap
flight to Turkey, and
you're ready to go.
...but where? And
what's the full cost of
getting to your final destination?
Consider this: if you fly into Istanbul's Atatürk
International Airport, Turkey's
busiest, you can get into the city
center by Metro and
tram for
less than TL3.
But if you fly to Dalaman on
your way to Bodrum,
getting from the airport to your hotel
may cost you more than you just paid
for your cheap flight from Europe!
Not only that, it may cost you more
than flying to Bodrum-Mugla
Airport directly.
And if you fly to Dalaman to
get to Istanbul,
it may take you a day to get to Istanbul
by bus,
and then a day back to Dalaman to catch
your return flight and, again, it
may end up costing more than you spent
for your "cheap" flight in
the first place.
If you're unlucky, you may end up
spending more on this roundabout route
than you would have spent to fly directly
to Istanbul.
Why? In a country
such as Turkey with good, comfortable,
frequent, ubiquitous bus
service, why don't convenient buses
serve all airports?
There are some airport bus services
by an airport-services company named
Havas
Ground Handling,
but they do not always go where or
when foreign visitors want them to
go.
Even Antalya
Airport, one of Turkey's busiest,
has few buses, and you end up taking
a taxi from the
airport to your hotel. On one
trip, the taxi fare for me was TL55
one-way—not much less than
the same as a cheap flight by Onur
Air or AtlasJet from
Istanbul to Antalya! That's one of
the reasons I often stay in Antalya
at the Tuvana
Hotel: they'll pick
you up at the airport at no charge. More...
What to do? Look carefully
at the transfer situation and calculate
all trip costs—transfers as well
as airfares—before making your
reservations so that you don't suffer
a rude surprise.
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