How to organize your holidays in the Azores

If you are preparing for some vacations in the Azores, read the article we have made for you with the 5 essential steps to make your holidays in the Azores unforgettable.

We will address 5 points:

• Duration of vacations
• Flights
• Accommodation
• Car rental
• Tours and tourist activities

Holidays in the Azores: 5 Steps

The Azores are not one of the cheapest destinations, not because of the low cost of living, but because of the distance, especially if you are coming from a destination other than Portugal, as it almost always means taking several flights to reach the islands.

For this reason, people are often unable to return so soon, although everyone leaves the Azores wanting to return, such is the beauty of the islands and the empathy that the Azoreans provoke.

So, the advice is to take the opportunity to visit as many islands as possible during your stay.

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1 – How many days to stay in the Azores?

The first decision you have to make when you decide to travel to the Azores is to know how many days you will stay.

As the islands are not very large in size, there is a lot to see and do, especially on the 3 largest (S. Miguel, Pico, and Terceira).

Ideally, 14 days would be the number of days needed to visit some of the islands, in this example, 5 of the 9 islands.

In 14 days you could stay 5 days in S. Miguel, 6 days in Pico (2 of which would be to visit the islands of Faial and S. Jorge), and 3 days in Terceira island.

This is probably the best plan for visiting the Azores.

In case you are limited to one week, then you would spend 3 days in S. Miguel, 3 days in Pico (possibly cutting the trip to S. Jorge), and 1 day in Terceira.

For a week you cannot get to know the islands in depth, but it allows you to get a good idea of the best that each island has to offer, as long as you organize what you should see on each of the islands.

2 – How to fly to the Azores?

The second step is to choose a trip to the Azores, the cost of which normally consumes a significant portion of the total travel budget.

Therefore, you should be familiar with the solutions that we explain in the article: HOW TO TRAVEL TO THE AZORES in order to save time and money.

It is from Lisbon and Porto that there are more routes with direct flights. There are 5 islands that receive visitors directly from the two largest Portuguese cities: S. Miguel, Terceira, Pico, Faial, and Santa Maria.

The other 4 islands always require two flights. The flight lands on one of the 5 islands mentioned above, plus an inter-island flight operated by the Azorean airline, SATA.

If you are going to visit the Azores in summer, you will have more flights and routes available, while in winter, there is less choice of routes and flights.

Use the system below to search for the best flights from all airlines flying to the Azores.

It’s practical, saves time and you can still receive a cashback (up to 10%).

3 – Look for accommodation in the Azores

After booking the tickets to be able to travel to the Azores, the next step should be to book accommodation.

A particular situation that occurs on islands with less tourism is that there are many more holiday homes than hotels, so you should consider renting a house rather than a hotel room.

To book your accommodation, you can use the most popular booking platforms:

1 – Booking – World leader in vacation rentals. Booking is one of the platforms with the most accommodation in the Azores in its portfolio. Therefore, when planning your trip to the Azores, you will certainly find a wide variety of options on any of the islands.

2 – Airbnb – It is a platform that works differently, as it is only open to houses, apartments, etc. Does not work with hotels. Here people rent their houses or simply a room.

3 – Tripadvisor – This platform is best known for reviews. How many of us have never seen a review of a hotel or restaurant on TripAdvisor? But the truth is, it’s also one of the world’s leading vacation rentals. Usually, they use other companies however created and belonging to the group for each business area. Visit TripAdvisor

The 3 platforms above are the most used for those booking accommodation in the Azores.

You can also try to rent directly saving the rental fees that these platforms charge.

If you are staying on the island of Pico, you can book directly on our website, as we own 2 holiday homes on the island of Pico.

If you are going to visit other islands, use the most popular rental platforms:

4 – How to get around in the Azores?

The Azores have a low population density and a high seasonality in tourism.

These two characteristics mean that the offer of public transport is deficient, especially in the summer, when the increase in tourism is notorious.

In addition to the fact that there is no metro or train on any of the islands, there are not enough buses and taxis to meet demand during the summer months.

There is also no UBER or any other similar platform, so the best solution will always be to rent a car from a rent-a-car.

Due to seasonality, car rental companies are unable to have a large fleet, as in winter they have almost no customers, and investing in larger fleets just to meet the increased demand in summer does not pay off.

For this reason, prices soar in the summer, and there are often no cars for those who try to rent them upon arrival in the archipelago.

It is essential that you rent your car as soon as you confirm your trip to the Azores so as not to run the risk of not being able to have a car, or having to pay an exorbitant price to have one.

To book your rental, use a car rental company search engine like the one below.

At the vehicle pick-up point, look for the option: Portugal – Azores Archipelago. Then choose the city/island. Finally, choose the dates and do the search.

In addition to the platform above, you can also test another platform that is well-known worldwide and test both.

The other platform we talk about is Rentalcars. Just click on the link below to go to the official website:

RENTALCARS

If your destination is the island of Pico, you can get a discount with a rent-a-car partner on our website, not least because car rental companies are much smaller in number and are usually not even on the most well-known rental platforms, such as the ones we put above.

Leave a comment below and we’ll explain how you get the discount.

5 – Visits, tours, and tourist activities

If you are going to travel to the Azores in the summer, it is also recommended that you book your tours or visits in advance.

This is because certain activities are limited in terms of the number of daily visits, such as the climb to Pico Mountain, or, for example, whale watching.

To book your activities, you can contact the companies that offer the services you want directly, or you can also search on specialized tourist activity sites, such as Viator, a company of the TripAdvisor group.

Below is a form with activities sold by this platform for the Azores.

The advantage of buying here is that it has a lot of different activities on all the islands and allows you to compare prices, TripAdvisor reviews, etc.

And if you have to cancel, it’s always simpler when you buy on a platform like this. Payments are also safer on platforms of this size.

Another platform that offers various activities in the Azores is GET YOUR GUIDE.

In the widget below you can see some of the activities that you can buy on this platform for the Azores.

This way you can test two of the biggest platforms for selling tours, tickets, and other tourist activities and compare prices and reviews from those who made them.

If, for example, you want to rent bicycles, you can use this site: BikesBooking

In the case of Pico, and because many of the activities do not appear on these types of platforms, sometimes it is simpler to contact service companies directly.

That’s why we made some partnerships with companies in Pico. All our guests have exclusive discounts on some activities.

Holidays in the Azores: Conclusion

The advantage of the Azores as a lesser-known destination is the possibility of finding a group of islands with an intact and authentic nature.

Despite all its potential, it is still possible to enjoy everything the islands have to offer in peace, far from the confusion of other mass tourist destinations, where we spend more time in queues than admiring what it has to offer.

Fortunately, this does not happen in the Azores.

Tranquility and peace are part of the daily lives of its people and those who visit the Azores.

But this advantage could also turn into a disadvantage if you don’t organize the holidays in the Azores correctly, and in advance.

This article essentially aims to help visitors understand some of the specificities of the islands in order to plan their holidays to be unforgettable.

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