Flight Itinerary Vs. Travel Itinerary– Is there Any Difference and How to Get Flight Itinerary for Visa Application?

A Schengen Visa travel itinerary is not an actual flight ticket booking or hotel booking that you spend money for, but a detailed plan of your trip to the Schengen Area.

It does not require any money in advance. It should include details regarding your flights and accommodation as well as your day-to-day activities.

The Embassies/Consulates allow you to submit Flight Reservations and Hotel Reservations which are not the same as flight and hotel bookings – and the “travel itinerary” is where you list those reservations and other activities.

Below you will find the differences between “reservations” and “bookings”:

● Flight & Hotel Reservations

When you reserve your round trip travel tickets or hotel room it means that all of your information will be stored in the system of an airline company or on the website of a hotel (such as your full name and the details of your passport).

The airline tickets or the hotel rooms are being held for you for a specific period of time without you actually paying their full price.

Please note that your airline ticket reservation cannot be a one-way ticket. The Visa officers also request a return ticket as proof of your intentions to return to your home country.

Typically, the hold option for an air ticket allows you to hold a flight for 7 days.

The colloquial term used to describe a Visa ticket reservation is “dummy ticket”. However, this doesn’t mean, as the name suggests, that they are “fake tickets” but, instead that they are a reservation where you don’t need to make the payment in advance.

For a few airlines (and most hotels) the reservation is completely free of charge. Other airlines can charge you a certain percentage of the fixed ticket for your flight confirmation.

However, making a reservation doesn’t mean you are going to pay the whole price of the plane ticket or the hotel room.

If you need assistance with your flight and hotel reservations, please do not hesitate to Contact our team, as we would be more than glad to help you out. 

● Flight & Hotel Bookings

The flight booking is the confirmed flight ticket that you actually pay for, and that most of the time cannot be refunded (there are only a few airlines that offer refundable plane tickets).

The same rule can be applied for hotels – Once you pay, the amount can be refundable or not, depending on the hotels’ policy.

But the main difference between an airline and a hotel is that most hotels allow you to reserve a room without paying (only a few hotels might ask you to pay in advance).

No Schengen Embassy/Consulate requires you to get a booked flight or hotel room and pay in advance prior to getting an approved Visa (you must do this only if you are applying from the United Kingdom), as they cannot guarantee your Schengen Visa approval.

If you pay for the flight and the accommodation and your Schengen Visa gets rejected, you may lose a large amount of money. However, in case of Visa denial, a few airlines may agree to fully reimburse you.

Therefore, Embassies and Consulates allow you to submit only flight and hotel reservations, which means you do not need to pay 100% upfront (they allow you to book a flight/hotel room and pay in advance, but they did not recommend it).

You can populate the details within your trip itinerary using only flight and hotel reservations as well.

To sum up, the Schengen Visa detailed day-to-day travel itinerary doesn’t include only your flight and hotel itinerary details but also the daily activities that you plan during your journey within the Schengen Area (even if on some Internet websites you may find that the Schengen Visa travel itinerary is the same as a flight itinerary). 

Important: If you’re planning to stay at a friend or relative’s house and not at a hotel during your trip, you can simply add in your travel itinerary their home address instead of a hotel’s address.

If you are part of a tour or cruise, make sure you ask your travel agency or local travel agent to provide you with a letter indicating the cities and countries you are planning on visiting.

We also suggest that you ask them to provide you with an official letter on a letter headed paper containing the logo of the tourism agency. The letter must be addressed to the Embassy/Consulate where you are submitting your documents.

The process of getting a Travel Itinerary for visa application is simple and quick, just follow these steps:

•        Go to https://www.schengenvisaitinerary.com/

•        Choose the Flight Itinerary form from the plans

•        Give basic information about you in a short form as your name & surname as given in your passport, your email address, phone number, as well as travellers flight details as the date of arrival and departure.

•        After you click apply, you will have to proceed with the online payment.

•        Upon the confirmation of your payment, you will receive an email at the address you have submitted, with the details of the service you have purchase.

•        Print the email and present it to the diplomatic office in your reserved visa interview session.

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