Wanderlusting: How to Find Great Deals

 

Long gone are the days where we needed a travel agent to find the best travel deals.  Now I’m not knocking anyone who is a travel agent nor am I saying that they aren’t useful, especially for those who don’t like to do the legwork for themselves.  But let’s be honest, it’s 2017 and if you don’t mind doing some legwork you can find some pretty awesome travel deals yourself.

 

I’ve been traveling quite a bit these past few years and I’ve booked trip packages and booked things individually.  I think it all depends on the deal, but I like both methods.  I booked my Cancun vacation last year as a package, the airfare, all-inclusive hotel and airport transfers were all booked through Priceline and in one fail swoop everything was done.  It was a group trip so it came out pretty cheap, less than $700/pp.  It was the cheapest route for a trip like that, but that’s not something I would’ve done for every vacation.  In fact, for every other vacation I booked airfare and lodging separately.  I’ve come in at or under budget for every vacation and I’ll tell you how.

 

Airfare:

I’ve been able to keep each of my flights below $800 for the past few years.  Whether I’m booking a mistake fare, fuel dump or taking advantage of a newly launched budget airline I’ve been able to keep these flights pretty cheap.  I have a full-time job and have an active life outside of work, so I don’t have all the time in the world to comb the internet for flight deals.  I do have time to subscribe to some of my favorite travel blogs and set up alerts on other sites.

 

Travel Blogs – Secret Flying and Thrifty Traveler are two blogs that I check daily.  They post flight deals and mistake fares, along with other travel tips.  In fact, I found out about my Dubai and Paris deals on Thrifty Traveler.

 

Skyscanner & Momondo – These sites search everywhere, imagine Indeed for flights.  I love that you can put your where you’re starting your trip, pick dates and then put ‘Everywhere’ on Skyscanner and it’ll search for the cheapest flights everywhere in the world during that frame.  It’s great when you know when you’ll be taking a vacation, but need a bit of help deciding where.   You can also use Momondo to book rental cars and hotels, but I mainly use it for flights.

 

Google Flights – I love that you can set alerts on here and that it has as fare calendar and flight tracker.  It also has that ‘Everywhere’ feature that Skyscanner has.

 

 

Lodging:

Booking.com – I prefer using Booking for hotels when I travel.  Whether it’s a quick weekend getaway to Austin or a two week vacation to Barcelona, I love how easy it is to use the site and app.

 

AirBNB – I personally love getting AirBNB’s and have stayed in quite a few these past few years.  I prefer to get the entire place to myself when I do book one, and a lot of times they’re cheaper than a hotel.  I’ll one of these if I want to experience the city as a local or if the group I’m traveling with doesn’t mind one.

 

Hostelworld – I had my first hostel experience last December in Paris and I really enjoyed it.  I eased into the waters by booking a single room with it’s own bathroom and it was truly like a hotel room.  I had all of the amenities of a hotel without the price.

 

 

Transportation:

I typically base this off of local norms.  I’ll use a combination of taxis, Ubers, buses and trains to get around when I travel.  Oh, and I love the hop on/hop off buses!  Not only do you learn so much about the city, but they’re typically cheap and you can use them to get around to the touristy parts of town.

 

So there you have it, that’s pretty much everything I use to keep my vacations fun and cheap.  If you have any questions or any additional tips of your own please feel free to comment below or tweet me!