I've travelled a lot. I've visited a lot of beautiful countries and met fascinating people from many cultures. And, most of my trips start with the proper flight reservations, because for me, that's the place to start. As I travel to distant locations, I want to know if I can get decent airfare, or in rarer cases (to a place I really want to go and I'm willing to pay whatever the going rate is) I just want to find out if there's a flight available in the season I can travel in. That's one thing about flight reservations, they're not always available every month of the year. Some airlines trim or cancel flights to certain regions of the world at different times during different seasons. For me, that's a blessing and a curse. A blessing if they've still got flights when I can travel (because of scheduled work breaks) and a curse if they've cut all flights during the only times when I can travel. So, for me, flight reservations really are the place to start, because if there's a restricted number of flights, and I don't make a reservation in time during those slow seasons, I'm out of luck due to no flight reservations.