When I did blind booking in December 2017, I just tried out something new, but everything you need to know about it will be underneath!
What is blind booking?
Blind booking is basically like the name says, you are booking something blind and don’t know where you will go or what you will do. How that is in reality is quite simple. There are airlines and websites, which offer something like that.
You need to put in your airport, or the airport, from where you want to fly from. Then it depends on the website and the service. Depending on the airport and the service, you are for example able to choose even a category. Categories are something like: party, history or nature.
That’s not the important topic. You are choosing the dates you want to fly from, because it will be a roundtrip ticket. After the payment is done, the service will choose, during the days you were choosing to fly, a flight and will send the ticket to your email.
Now you know where you are going and can plan your trip.
Where is it common?
Blind booking is mainly a thing in Europe. It is in general not common, so it is a service, which is not much used. I tried it out at the end of 2017, and since then no more services have come to life.
For the airlines, who do that, it is something, which they offer but not really promote.
It is also possible to book flights with hotels and just hotels and not know what you will get.
The cities, where you can fly to are usually big cities and tourist hotspots, for example Rome, Ibiza, Paris, Dublin. So the possibilities are usually destinations, where you are able to get cheap flights also without doing blind booking.
How was my experience?
I booked a flight from my hometown Hamburg in Germany, for a long weekend in December.
After paying I received my ticket, where I was not excited. The ticket was to Toulouse in France. For me not speaking any French and to be honest, I was not excited. I had the ticket, so I had to go.
When booking back then a Airbnb, it was a really nice place, right in the center, with a balcony and everything needed.
During the time I was there, Christmas was standing in front of the door and that means, Christmas markets!
I can highly recommend French Christmas markets, because the molted wine is absolutely amazing.
The time in Toulouse was three or even four nights, during this time I tried my best seeing the city, walking around and with Couchsurfing I even met people, which was great. We are actually still in contact.
Basically even though I was not excited at all about visiting Toulouse in France, I had a great time, which I enjoyed a lot. It was good to just get out of your daily life and have some fun.
Would I do it again?
If they would offer it around the world, when I could tell the countries I haven’t been and to one of them would be the flight then yes. My issue with blind booking is that my goals changed back then. I want to visit every country, so I prefer spending money on achieving the goal and not traveling in Europe so much.
When I travel in Europe it is basically to reach places or visit friends, Vienna in Austria for example.
The concept is something I like, because you don’t need to think much, don’t need to do research for the flight, you just pay and get the flight ticket, during the time you want. That is perfect for those times, when the flights in general are expensive and you want to travel in Europe.
Summary
Blind booking is a fun thing to try out, from $79 you are able to do it per person and not knowing where to go can be also positive. I would not recommend doing it all the time like that, because you could search differently and find cheaper flights than that, to cities you also might haven’t thought about.
It is not a popular thing, because of two reasons, people don’t know about it and many people would not want to try it out, because most of the time people know where they want to travel to.
Malta is another place, you could end up while blind booking, check out my camping experience!
I would love to hear your experiences about this place, or questions. Share it with me in the comments.
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