Earliest flight from tampa and hotel recommendations

[bsbcgirl]

Hi,
Have never been to Tampa port. What is the earliest flight to book home? Considering 10:00 am. Also what suggestions for convenient/clean hotel just to sleep night before departure?

Thanks

[CoquinaKeyNereid]

Personally, I would not book a flt out of TIA before noon at the very earliest. We have cruised out of Tampa twice. The first time we did the traditional debark and did not arrive to TIA until 10:45, but we had a 2pm flt so all was good there. Our last cruise, we got a good deal on and 11:35 am flight and made it doing self-assist debark, but anything earlier than that is really going to be a dice roll.


As far as hotels, we use the ones on Rocky Point near the airport because thay have a great cruise pkg: free airport shuttle, free breakfast, and a round trip shuttle to the port and then back to either TIA or the hotel for those that booked the park and cruise.

Here are the names of the three and I would go with any one of them depending on the best rate. We ended up at the Holiday Inn both times but it just happend that that was the best rate at the time.

Holdiay Inn Rocky Point, Hampton Inn Rocky Point and Chase Suites Rocky Point. All three hotels are right next to each other. They all overlook the Bay and have a Bahama Breeze restaurant in the adjoining parking lot areas.


The Westshore area and Tampa Airport area are some other areas to check as well. Downtown Tampa hotels will put you closer to the port but very few, if any, have airport shttles and their rates are much higher.






good luck

[bsbcgirl]

Thank you for suggestions/help.

[JohninDC]

Listen to Hoosier! Don't try to book a flight out of the TPA airport prior to about 11:30 or noon -- do you want to spend your cruise worried about making your return flight?

[sometimes sailor]

Originally Posted by bsbcgirl

Hi,
Have never been to Tampa port. What is the earliest flight to book home? Considering 10:00 am. Also what suggestions for convenient/clean hotel just to sleep night before departure?

Thanks

and the rate includes airport and port of tampa shuttles.
Tahitian Inn and Resort www.tahitianinn.com. They start the shuttles to the pier at 9:00 am and it is six miles away.

[aria48]

Easiest hotel for early flight is the Marriott at the airport. No shuttles or anything to mess with.
Like others said though, a later flight is better and pick one of the hotels with shuttle service (Rocky Point area hotels are good like mentioned before.) There's a map of all of them here.