Many people think that traveling means you have to spend thousands of dollars on a single trip, sunbathe at exclusive beach resorts or stay in five-star hotels.
But this is not true. Your travel style, like your lifestyle, is a matter of choice. You don’t have to fly first class or spend incredible amounts of money traveling.
As a matter of fact, you can reduce the price of your trip and manage to save a lot of money by using some strategies that have proved to be extremely helpful to all travelers who are limited by budget.
These are the six travel hacks you can use to save money on travel.
Booking Your Flight is a Philosophy
Booking your flight includes a lot of small hacks.
- The first one is to book your flight in the afternoon since flight prices are much more likely to drop later during the day. That goes along with the well-known fact that prices fluctuate during the week, so keep this in mind as well.
- Check for flight prices on less popular websites as they frequently offer bigger discounts than the best-known OTAs. Some of the websites you can check are CheapOair, Secret Flying, The Flight, and Holiday Pirates.
- Did you know that flights can have different prices depending on the country you book from? You can use a virtual private network to circumvent this, letting you surf from a server located in another country.
- Airline companies track your behavior, and they will show you higher prices when you return to their website because they know you are interested in their flights.
That is why, when searching for airline tickets, you should clear your cookies and cache. Moreover, make sure you enable private browsing never to save your search.
- Browsing through search engines like Google Flights, Adioso or Skyscanner will scan different options for your flight and show you comparative rates.
- Fly at night. When you do this, you can sleep during your flight. That will save you both money and time. These can be the money you would spend to book accommodation for that night and the time you would spend flying during the day.
Use Frequent Flyer, Membership Points and Credit Cards
To lower your flight’s price, take advantage of your frequent flyer or membership points. You can collect them every time you fly through various frequent flyer programs.
Another option is to use your credit card to make daily purchases and earn reward points. That will give you many benefits, but make sure that you get a credit card designed for travel lovers as these cards can offer you the best deals. Credit card companies partner with numerous airline companies where you can transfer your points.
And this doesn’t go just for flights but accommodation as well. Many hotels will give you discounts or even free stays if you have collected enough reward points.
Prices
You have to know one thing ‒ prices are not set in stone, especially if you can get in touch with the service owner you need.
For instance, if you want to book accommodation on Airbnb, message your host before booking. Let them know how long you are planning to stay, how wonderful a guest you are, and everything else that could help you lower the price. Of course, it goes without saying that you should be friendly and kind while negotiating.
Bottom line, don’t ever be afraid to ask for a discount if you think you have the skills to reduce the price.
Earn Money While You Travel
This one may sound a bit strange, but we will remove all your doubts right away.
Nowadays, there are so many ways you can earn money online. So, why wouldn’t you do it while on vacation?
Whether you are a graphic/web designer, writer, or teacher, you can find a freelance job on one of the freelance platforms such as Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, and so on. Not only will this give you the option to earn while traveling, but it can also be a side gig to make some extra money from the comfort of your home.
Get Multi-day Passes or Tourist Cards
When you go to the supermarket, you buy in bulk. Well, guess what ‒ it is the same when it comes to tourist passes. If you stay in one city for longer than a couple of days, get an all-inclusive multi-day pass.
You can use it for transport, museums, tours and many other things. You can also benefit from using coupons as they always offer lots of discounts.
Finally, even though this goes without saying, we want to mention that you should use public transport whenever you can. If you use a taxi only rarely or don’t use it at all, you will manage to save incredible amounts of money.
Find Free WiFi
You will find free WiFi hotspots in all big cities around the world. There is no need to purchase gigabytes of cellular data to connect to public WiFi or sit at a cafe and use their hotpot.
However, be careful when using a free connection. You can use it to chat with your loved ones and call them, but not for any payments or browsing sessions that ask you to enter your sensitive information such as your Social Security number, credit card number, and so on.
It’s easy to hack tree hotspots, so make sure you never enter any of your sensitive information while browsing through them.
Conclusion
What do you think of this list we have compiled? Are you already familiar with some of these strategies? Maybe you can add them to your existing list of travel hacks or tell us what hacks you use.
All in all, it takes some time, will, and skills to make your travel cheaper. It all boils down to whether you are willing to invest them to save lots of money.