In a flight-plus-hotel deal, can I leave out the hotel?

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For hotels, unlike with flights, there is no penalty for being a no-show (Getty/iStock)

Q I heard of some “special deals” for travel to the US where, if you book a hotel along with a flight, the price plummets compared with the air fare alone. What happens, though, if I book one but then don’t show up at the hotel (I have family just outside New York and would stay with them)?

Catherine, Duchess of Dagenham

A For decades the big airlines, such as British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, have had a fares structure on North American routes which is designed to extract as much as possible from business travellers: raising fares to absurdly high levels on return trips which do not include a Saturday night.

On BA next month from Heathrow to New York JFK, for example, you can find a return flight for as little as £274 (hand-luggage only) so long as you include a Saturday night stay in the US.

But the standard fare for a midweek trip is an astonishing £2,108 – nearly eight times more. Presumably the tradition continues because there are enough lazy and unchallenging business travellers (or agents) out there who will pay such ridiculous prices.

It is easy to find alternatives, most notably on Norwegian from Gatwick to New York, which has no minimum stay for the lowest fares. But if you prefer to fly from Heathrow, and you want the widest choice of departure times, then the straightforward option for a midweek trip of three nights is to ask for a “flight plus hotel” quote.

Suddenly that £2,108 falls to £526, less than one-quarter the fare you first thought of. This, incidentally, is for the Hudson Hotel on the Upper West Side. And the rate includes a 23kg checked bag.

I have used this technique on a number of occasions, sometimes staying for some or all of the time, sometimes not at all (though I do try to let the property know in case they can offer the room to someone else). Unlike with flights, there is no penalty for being a no-show.

The “Saturday night stay” rule looks antiquated to me; the big airlines used to practice it in Europe, until the budget carriers rendered it ridiculous. But for as long as it prevails, feel free to find a workaround.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder