We love to utilise layovers when planning our trips. When possible we will plan our travel route with stopovers, ensuring there is enough time to leave the airport and possibly stay a night. It is a great way to see a new city and add some variety to the trip.
Back in November we spent 24 hours in Singapore while traveling from Tokyo Japan to Perth Australia. While 24 hours may not seem like very long to explore a city we managed to pack in quite a bit into such a short space of time with some careful planning. 24 hours may not have given us time to do and see everything Singapore had to offer but it did offer us a taster of the city .
For us it just made sense to spend a day exploring a new city when we were not pushed for time. While in Singapore we spent the day wandering the city, sampling delicious cuisines and taking in the stunning city sites. A brief trip but it was definitely worthwhile.
We also had a 10 hour layover in Dubai back in 2017 on our way home from a three week trip around Vietnam. 10 hours gave us enough time to leave the airport, explore Dubai Mall and see the Burj Khalifa. We got a small sample of Dubai as a city and it is defiantly somewhere we want to return.
Whether your stopover is 8 hours, 24 hours or 48 hours, layovers are an amazing way to sample a city while on route to your final location.
How to Incorporate a Layover into Your Trip?
When you are booking long haul flights sometimes you will have an unplanned layover. It might only be 2-3 hours in the airport waiting for your connecting flight or it may be for 12 hours. If you are looking for a longer layover, one that allows you to get out of the airport and explore the city and possibly spend the night there you will have to plan it.
We plan our layovers using the multi-stop or multi city search option when looking up flights. This search feature is available on most flight search engines and most airline websites.
Check out the example below using Skyscanner.
For us to fly home to Dublin from Thailand we can fly with Emirates. However to get home we would first have to have a layover in Dubai. Using the multi-city search tool I have searched from flights from Bangkok to Dubai on the 1st of January. Then I have searched for flights from Dubai to Dublin on the 3rd of January.
If you want to research your own multi-city trip it is best to begin with a basic search. Just enter your departure city and final destination. From here you can browse the airlines that are available to you and search the stopovers that are on that route. It is easier to do a regular search before a multi-city search to research the airlines and routes first.
Once you discover a route you like you can then search again using the multi-city search tool. You can search both legs of your journey by separate dates like we have done above.
Next time you are planning a trip why not enjoy two destinations for the price of one. Adding an extended layover when booking your flights usually comes at no additional cost and you will get to experience a new city too!
To The Airport...And Beyond 
always a great way to get a sneak peak at a place then get an idea if its worth a longer time there
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I’ve always wanted to have a layover that’s long enough for me to explore a bit, but I’ve always been a) with other people who don’t want to do that, or b) too scared that something will go wrong! But I haven’t tried doing it with the multi-stop function on websites like Skyscanner so maybe that’s the best way to do it!
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Try it next time 😊
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