I still had one piece of the puzzle to fit: travel between Copenhagen and Venice.<\/p>\n
The final step: Booking tickets through Chase Travel’s Ultimate Rewards.[<\/p><\/div>I booked our flights between Copenhagen and Venice on SAS through Chase Travel’s Ultimate Rewards booking portal. Those flights were essentially free. Why free? I’d applied for my Chase Sapphire Reserve during a promotion that awarded 100,000 points for charging $3,000 to the card within three months of receiving my card. Booking the SAS flights required 69,498 points, which, as noted, were essentially free seeing that I received the 100,000 point bonus.\u00a0Had I paid for the flights, the cost would have been more than $1,000.<\/p>\n
I \u00a0want to note here that SAS does not offer business class between Copenhagen and Venice. I chose premium economy for a few reasons: 1) at Copenhagen Airport, SAS Fast Track through security is only for those flying SAS in Economy Plus and above or for Eurobonus Gold and Diamond members; 2) lounge access in Copenhagen would cover breakfast for us; 3); no fees for our luggage; 4) meal onboard; 5) priority boarding; and 6) preferred seating.<\/p>\n
One other note, of the 100,000 bonus points I received through Chase, I was able to book a few hotel nights in Scandinavia. My entire stay in Denmark and Sweden was more than covered by the savings on business class air and points I had accumulated through Chase’s credit card offer.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
My initial search for cheap business class tickets to Europe returned fares in excess of $10,000 for two people. By getting creative I saved more than $4,000, and added a week in Copenhagen and the surrounding area. By stopping in Copenhagen, we’d have time to shake the jet lag and visit another fascinating region of Europe before heading off to Venice for a week of cruising on Ponant and bicycling with Backroads. Plus, our luggage, if it were delayed, would have time to catch up with us, unlike flying in the night before the cruise when luggage has virtually no chance of catching up.<\/p>\n
I’m sure clever readers (and we have quite a few on our sites) will tell me other ways to find cheap business class tickets to Europe. And I welcome their comments. We’re all learning here. But I’m pretty happy with how it all worked out, even if it took a lot of work and time at the computer. Are you one of those clever readers? What did I do right and what did I do wrong? And how would you have met the challenge if you were the one looking to get to Europe in comfort?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How I found cheap business class tickets to Europe to save thousands of dollars getting to and from my cruise – in comfort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"full-width-content","footnotes":""},"categories":[9324,344,68],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}