Travelling to/from Italy by air

A leading travel specialist is Expedia, a comprehensive travel site for all sorts of needs, from flights to hotels, from car rentals to holiday packages, from holiday deals to guides and insurance.

Here is an Expedia search box to find flights, cars and hotels according to your preferences. Flights are for UK residents, cars and hotels for residents of every part of the world:

If you're travelling from the USA, Economy Travel is an excellent service. Economy Travel has very low international airfares. As one of the largest international ticket agencies, it can offer savings between 10-40% off of published fares on 24 major airlines by offering consolidator fares. These are not the prices that you would pay if you booked directly from the airlines' websites or reservation systems.
This is the link to its site:
Economy Travel

Opodo is an online travel service owned by 9 of the world’s leading airlines: Aer Lingus, Air France, Alitalia, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa. It has access to over 400 airlines and over 30,000 hotels worldwide.
Opodo site is easy to use, and gives you the traveller the tools and information you need to plan your trip, if your time is limited or you're looking for ideas and inspirations.

Ebookers is another very good choice.
Ebookers - international flights & car rentals is a British online travel specialist, one of the leading in Europe, offering complete travel services, including discount airfares with 120 airlines and international car rentals at much cheaper prices. There are discounts for booking a flight online on certain flights.
They always have flight specials, car specials, holiday specials and deals.

Europcar is one of the leading car hire companies in the world, hiring more than 220,000 vehicles.
Europcar has a wide range of vehicles available for hire in over 118 countries around the world, including Italy, the UK and the USA, offering highly competitive prices on car & van rentals to both business and leisure travelers.
You can choose your country of residence from the 118 on the scroll list, for both pick-up and return of the car wherever you like.
Europcar has an efficient online reservations service, and excellent rates on a superb choice of vehicles from a rental station close to you. It also has special offers and discounts, constantly updated to ensure that it offers the most competitive rates at all times, including some great deals on longer term hire cars as an alternative option to leasing.

Here's the link:

Kelkoo is a shopping search engine to compare prices from hundreds of sites to find the best prices when shopping online.
Kelkoo helps you to compare prices for different types of services and products, including travel, flights, hotels, car hire, accommodation of all kinds, last minute holidays, weekend breaks, travel agents, and every other travel needs.

Here's the link:
Kelkoo

Travel 4 Less, part of lastminute, is a comprehensive website to research and meet all travel needs, offering tailor made holidays, discounted flights and independent travel arrangements.
Travel 4 Less, designed for both the independent traveller and the package holidaymaker, negotiates rates with leading airlines, hotels, car rental and tour companies, providing considerable discounts to the traveller.
It offers Car Hire 4 Less, up to 30% discounted car rental worldwide with leading companies such as Hertz, Alamo, Budget and Europcar, in over 4,000 locations in 25 countries including Italy. It is cheaper to hire a car from the UK before travel than it is locally, and it is useful if you want to find a car waiting for you at the airport the moment you arrive.
Travel 4 Less

111 Travel Directory is an excellent travel site, well designed, easy to navigate, rich with information. The section "Tips 4 Trips", with advice from other travellers, is interesting. Italy is well represented and widely covered. Worth a visit.
Click here:
111 Travel Directory - You'll find cruises, romantic getaways, country inns, boutique hotels, discount airfares, car rentals, vacation packages, European rail passes, plus travel advice.

Lunn Poly is a major UK travel agent, part of TUI UK, previously the Thomson Travel Group. Its website promotes deals and brochure content from top UK tour operators, including Thomson, JMC, First Choice, Airtours, Kuoni, Cosmos, Unijet, Virgin. Using it, you have access to comprehensive resort and destination information to help you book your holiday online. It has over 60,000 late deals, last minute holidays & special promotions throughout the year.

USEFUL INFORMATION FOR TRAVELLERS TO ITALY

To find and book a hotel in Italy, the cheapest and least time-consuming way is by doing it via the internet.

There are a number of online hotel reservations services with many hotels all over Italy.
These hotel services often have arranged special rates and discounts with the hotels. We have selected some of the best.
Here they are, with the links to their sites:

Accommodation Line

Venere - Hotels in Italy

Italian Tourist Web Guide

Another service for hotels reservations at discounted prices is Hotels Central. This is the link:
HotelsCentral - offers worldwide discounted hotel reservations

North American residents can find information and the facility to book rail tickets and Passes in Italy when they visit Rail Europe .
They are the specialists on rail travel in Europe, and you can both buy rail point-to-point tickets online for single journeys from one destination to another in Italy and Europe, and buy Italian and European Rail Passes online.
On Rail Europe you'll also find plenty of information about timetables, prices and other practicalities of Italian and European rail services:

Rail Europe

AIRLINES WITH FLIGHTS TO ITALY

Flights to Italy from European and non-European countries are numerous and competitive.
The national airline company is Alitalia. British Midland offers 'The Discover Europe Airpass', which can be used for scheduled flights in Italy and the rest of Europe. It can be bought from travel agents all over the world, but not in Europe. KLM UK offers 'Visit Europe'.
Charter flights' prices vary according to the season and the company. Sometimes it's possible to get reduced fares, on certain flights and services, or for groups and students. Ask the airlines offices or your travel agent. A company specialized in charter flights offering low air fares (but usually limited to a certain number of seats or to some flights) is the Irish Ryanair. Do not expect a great amount of space on the airplane, though, and they don't serve in-flight meals. Ryanair has many flight connections to Italy, to both major and secondary Italian airports, and it always opens new flight routes to Italian airports. In Italy Ryanair has a Call Centre on 02 28316. The phone number of Ryair in the United Kingdom is 0870 333 1231.