By LoveSnow
In August 2007, I started to do my research for the 2008 Sapporo Snow Festival. This is what I found out, which would have saved me some time, phone calls, and a little stress. Hope this helps someone trying to plan for the next Snow Festival. Ganbatte!
Cheap hotels and airline tickets will be difficult to find. But if you have time, you can get a good deal.
Our hotel (2-nights) and plane tickets from Haneda (for two people) combined was less than 90,000yen.
FYI we chose to go to Sapporo during the peak of the festival: on the weekend. This is when everyone else will be going. Hotels and flights will be harder this way. If you can manage to get to Sapporo earlier, leave before everyone else (before Sunday or even Tuesday), vs. going there on Saturday morning and leaving Monday (holiday) afternoon, you will have an easier time with flights. We made all our reservations online by ourselves.
Hotel choice: Hilton Otaru, 30 minutes away from Sapporo.
We were able to get rooms for less than 100USD per night through Expedia. We booked in early September, and before that date there were cheaper prices for this hotel. (Otaru is more of a summer resort area. Winter is typically their low season.)
Reason for Otaru vs. Sapporo: price and quality of hotel for your money. We didn't mind the 30 min. train ride to Sapporo. I imagine a 3/4-star hotel in Sapporo would have been over 25000yen a night, and reservations would be difficult to make. Otaru has its own Lights Festival too! If you want to ski and see the Snow Festival, stay in Otaru.
Plane Tickets: Skymark
Unless you want to pay 50000+yen for your plane tickets, or do a package deal like most Japanese, you will need to wait until early December to book your airline tickets.
The myth is that airlines jack up the prices for plane tickets during this festival, but I found that the prices were pretty reasonable. You just have more competition getting these tickets. Sooo you should know by early December if you are going to the festival and book early (by mid-December) for the best prices.
The only two websites for English reservations:
Skymark: http://www.skymark.co.jp/en/index.html
ANA/Airdo: http://www.ana.co.jp/eng/index.html
(You can make reservations on JAL website in Japanese!)
[editor's note: Air Do's best rates are not available through the ANA website, but only through Air Do's Japanese website or by phone: http://www.airdo.jp/]
At exactly 9:30am, two months before your desired date of departure/return, you will need to be at your computer and ready to buy your plane tickets. Familiarize yourself with the Skymark and ANA reservation page so you know what information you'll need to fill out. We booked through Skymark, which has the cheapest tickets you will find. Within 30 seconds, the Sky Bargain and two other cheapest flights were all gone (for the weekend flights). I type pretty fast, but by the time I plugged in four passengers・information, I was a little late, and had to settle for a more expensive flight. Know that within the first two days you can book, the Skymark tickets will be sold out for the peak weekend flights. ANA and JAL will still have flights available that week, just a little more expensive.
Note: ANA and JAL did not have their cheap tickets available for Monday afternoon (2/11/08) cheap tickets were only available up until the noon flights that day. And yes, for the cheap tickets you will have to go online twice that week: to book your departing flight, and to book your return flight back.
More about our experiences after we go to Sapporo! ;)
