A Primer on Booking Adventures - Kona, HI (Part 1)

Booking adventures – where booking can be either a verb or part of a compound noun.

As a frequent flyer and also a lifelong Econ major, I can tell you that prices of flights can be really weird in a good way sometimes.
       For example, a trip from Boston to DC can cost around $450 which is equivalent to going from Boston to Iceland or to Puerto Rico if you book about a month ahead.
       DC to Austin and DC to Seattle are about the same price, even though one is almost double the distance.
       Portland to Atlanta on some flights can cost more than one grand and you might spend less going from Portland to Seoul, South Korea instead.

Economists love studying airlines because each flight route is a "market" that can be priced almost independently, so prices for different routes don’t always relate in an intuitive way as demonstrated.

Okay fine, flight prices are weird and separately, Hawaii is exotic, so you want to go, sure why not. Well you know what else is not intuitive – the Hawaiian islands. In fact there are several popular islands, and unlike most of the United States, you can’t drive between some of these cities, so booking a hotel on one island and a flight to another is a major no-go unless you have a way of being in two places at once or plan on swimming through the Pacific to get to your hotel for the night.

I am obviously speaking from experience here and had a panic attack over the fact that both bookings were non-refundable, yet useless to me if they weren't on the same island. It ended up working out, but just remember that Maui is not the same island as Honolulu is not the same as the Big Island.

On a random note, the airport in Kona is completely outdoors (and the terminal looks like the gift shop area right after you check into a theme park). They can do that, I guess.

These people look like they wanted to be in this picture.