Cheaper way to visit HK and Japan

[WhatADeal!]

Hello, I am wondering if it is cheaper to:

1) Fly to Hong Kong with stop over in Japan or

2) Fly to Hong Kong and purchase flight there to Japan?

Flight will be from Toronto. If timing matters, I am planning the trip in late September. Would appreciate if you can let me know which Airlines to go with as well. Thanks in advance!

[eelfliw]

If you go with Japanese airlines, then it'll be cheaper to fly to HK with stopover in Japan. Japanese airlines do not offer direct Toronto to HK flights. They all stop over in Japan.

But if you intend to stay a few days in Japan and look for hotel, tour groups etc., then you might as well fly to HK first and then join a HK tour group to Japan. The tour group will get massive hotel discounts which will cancel out the higher plane ticket prices.

[xxxi]

I always take flight to HK and have a stop-over in Tokyo. 1 Stop-over is usually free of charge, you only need to pay for the airport tax. and I think you can find hotel deals online and you don't need to go to HK and take a trip to japan thru an agent. depends how much you are willing to pay for hotel, if you want to go cheap, you can stay at tokyo-inn, it's a business hotel and it's pretty clean. well, you don't have room services or any other fancy hotel services, but you don't need those services in japan as you can find food and everything easily :P

[fatpiggy]

Where about do you want to stay in Japan?

[jayk]

check toureast.com

They have an outlet at Spadina/Dundas in the GTA.

A ticket to Shanghai from Toronto roundtrip cost $935 in mid-April'ish via AC. Compare that to $1500 ish with the Air Canada site.

[WhatADeal!]

Probably just gonna stay within Tokyo. Does that make a difference?

Thanks guys for all the help thus far!



Where about do you want to stay in Japan?

[fatpiggy]

Probably just gonna stay within Tokyo. Does that make a difference?

Thanks guys for all the help thus far!

I just came back from the trip myself. Took United from YYZ and stop over in Tokyo and Honolulu. Even though there's no charge for one stop and paid extra for the second stop, I was out of luck for the cheapest ticket. (Cheapest ticket was round 1020 tax incl. last september, but I had to pay $1500 tax incl. because they won't allow stopover for the cheap ticket). The price difference is something you need to find out from your travel agent.

If I were you, I will confirm if there's a price difference if yo u had to make one stopover and if the difference is big enough.

If there is no price difference except the airport tax then I would recommend the direct route. In my case, if I didn't have to go to Honolulu, I definitely would have gone back to Hong Kong first and joined the tour there. Better accommodation and didn't have to waste time on traveling.

Toyko is really really expensive. I stayed in a hostel for 3500yen a day. The room is a matchbox and it was a 15 minute walk to the subway.

[AndyT]

I just came back from the trip myself. Took United from YYZ and stop over in Tokyo and Honolulu. Even though there's no charge for one stop and paid extra for the second stop, I was out of luck for the cheapest ticket. (Cheapest ticket was round 1020 tax incl. last september, but I had to pay $1500 tax incl. because they won't allow stopover for the cheap ticket). The price difference is something you need to find out from your travel agent.

If I were you, I will confirm if there's a price difference if yo u had to make one stopover and if the difference is big enough.

If there is no price difference except the airport tax then I would recommend the direct route. In my case, if I didn't have to go to Honolulu, I definitely would have gone back to Hong Kong first and joined the tour there. Better accommodation and didn't have to waste time on traveling.

Toyko is really really expensive. I stayed in a hostel for 3500yen a day. The room is a matchbox and it was a 15 minute walk to the subway.


I agreed with fatpiggy's idea of fly direct to HK and join a Tokyo tour form there. I will be doing it this summer. I have been fooling around on multi-city stopover flight in Air Canada's web site and found it hard to connect TO-Tokyo-HK and from HK-TO. AC don't offer daily flights from Tokyo-HK.
I will be doing this tour in the summer.Any HK tour operator web site recommendation here?? I heard that a 7 daysToyko tour depart from HK would cost about $1000ppl in the summer. Any price idea.:razz:

[MasterXan]

my experience with a Hong Kong tour group visiting Japan wasn't so great a few years ago. I heard that it is the new trend when touring Japan with a HK tour group and that is most of the time, the tour guide will send you off on your own, walking around the streets for a few hours and meet up.

With the tour I was with, mostly we hung around the city areas, went to malls most of the time and went to actual tourist attractions 2 days before we left. btw, this was a 1 week tour. Worst of all was on the 2nd day, the tour guide sent us off on our own to Disneyland, which was hella boring since I was 21 at the time and we were told that if we wanted to go back to the hotel, we'll have to do it on our own. With most Japanese people not knowing English and my Japanese sucked bad, I was very pissed.

[Hybrid88]

Flew with UA last fall. Toronto to Chicago to Honolulu to Tokyo to Hong Kong for about $16xx.

I did Tokyo myself and found it easy and fun. Didn't need a tour guide at all. Tokyo is a very safe city with lots of English sings everywhere including their subway/rail system. Once you are there get familiar with their transport system and you should be able to go everywhere in Tokyo. I took the bus, subway, rail and Airport Express without a problem. Have fun!

Check websites for hotel deals.

[jc-fury]

im actualy going back to HK this summer and planning to head to Tokyo as well. personally after doing some research i think it would be cheaper to take a flight from Toronto to HK with a stop over in Tokyo. I asked some chinese travel agencies for a quote to HK through JAL and they said it would be approximately $1400 including the airport tax for tickets for mid May. I also checked out some tour agencies located in HK and the price for a 7 day tour costs approximately $1000 per person.

The airfare I quoted was for flights leaving mid May but it should roughly cost the same for flights in September since its low season as well.

Make sure you shop around cause usually chinese travel agencies are cheaper than online websites.