In some cases, booking a stopover is as simple as using one of the sites linked above—those airlines make it easy to add a stopover to your trip.
If you’re not booking with one of the airlines listed above, however—or you want to visit a city that’s not on the offered list—that doesn’t mean you can’t add a stopover. You just need to be a little more creative about it.
To book a DIY stopover itinerary, you’re essentially booking a multi-city flight itinerary, with the “stopover” being the middle city. This way, you get to choose how long you stay, how many stopovers you add to your trip, and whether you add stopovers to one or both legs of a roundtrip journey.
If you’re looking for a stopover that potentially reduces the overall cost of airfare, look at the common layover destinations on simple round-trip tickets. Flying from New York to Sydney, you might run into plenty of itineraries that connect in Los Angeles—which makes it an ideal candidate for a stopover. Getting separate tickets from New York–Los Angeles and then Los Angeles–Sydney may cost less than buying a simple New York–Sydney ticket. (We call this the Greek Islands trick.)