Little-Known Methods For Travelling On The Cheap
No matter where you like to travel, or how often you manage to do so, there’s no argument against wanting to save a little money in the process. Travel is one of life’s genuinely outstanding experiences, the kind of event that opens you up as an individual – but it always comes at a price. If you are wondering how you might be able to save a little money next time you go away, you might be pleased to discover that there are a huge number of ways to do exactly that. What follows is a list of some of the lesser-known methods for making travelling much cheaper. Consult this next time you are thinking of planning a trip abroad.
The Flight
One of the biggest costs in any holiday is the transportation. This is especially true if you are flying, as we all know how expensive flying can be. But there are some sneaky ways of bringing the cost down, even if it does sometimes mean your time in the air will be a little longer, or not quite as comfortable as you are used to. One great way to save money on flights is to use the Skyscanner web app to search for flights before you buy.
What sets apart this flight search service from the rest is that you can easily search for multiple destinations in one go and cross-reference them against each other. This is useful in a number of ways. Firstly, you can use it to simply find the cheapest flights for a particular date – useful if you don’t care where you are going, but just want to go somewhere. Or you can use it to discover the cheapest way to get to your chosen destination, which often includes having a stop-over or two. Longer, yes – but so much cheaper, and almost always worth the time and effort spent making it happen.
Another great way to make flights a lot cheaper is to bring your own food on board. There is a limit to liquids, of course, but for most foods you will find that it is not a problem. That being said, always check with the airline beforehand – as well as checking the customs of the country you are entering, just in case you don’t eat it all on the plane.
The Accommodation
If you want a good holiday, you will always want to be able to stay somewhere that you love. Finding good accommodation which isn’t going to bankrupt you can sometimes seem impossible, but here again there are always ways of working around the many difficulties you often face. One particularly useful tip is to check last minute websites for hotel rooms. Hotels almost always overbook, because people frequently cancel their bookings at the last minute. This means that from time to time you will be able to find a top quality room for a hugely reduced price. Some of these reductions can be shocking, so it is definitely worth checking before you go. Who knows – you might be able to cancel your existing accommodation and even get booked into a better one with this method!
There are plenty of other ways to save on accommodation too. A particular favorite of many frequent travellers is to go for a rental property, rather than traditional holiday accommodation booking. Oftentimes, the amount you pay for the likes of villa rentals is actually less than the same amount of time spent in a mainstream hotel, so that is worth bearing in mind next time you go somewhere exotic. The golden rule here is to never assume that you have found the cheapest or best accommodation until you have checked all of the options in your chosen area of travel.
The Car
It is very popular to hire a car as a means of making your way around your destination – but there are some infamous examples of people being fully ripped off by such schemes. If you are going down this route, one essential thing to bear in mind is that you should book from home, and you should request to see a copy of the contract before doing so – have it emailed to you if possible, just to avoid any confusion. This will stop them from being able to charge you over what they quoted at time of sale, which is a common cause of money loss on holiday.
These are all effective, not very well known ways of keeping your money in order on holiday. It is worth trying these out if you are keen to enjoy your holiday as much as possible – without breaking the bank.
