Mostly the expensive part of your trip is the ticket to get there. Here are a few tips to help you keep your budget down.
1) Search engine
There are probably hundreds of search engines to help you find the best rate for your flight. Rather than looking at dozens of airline websites, they do the job for you to find the best offers. The ones we’ve used are Kayak, Skyscanner, Airwander and Momondo. It’s quite easy to use them. You just fill in your destination, if it’s a one-way or a round-trip and your dates. Give it a few seconds and all the possible flight will pop onto your screen. You can apply extra filters like choosing a direct flight or the maximum amount of hours that you want to travel. Everything is possible.
Extra tip: Sometimes it’s useful to split your travel route by yourself. For example: We wanted to fly from Brussels to Mexico-City. The best price Kayak could offer us was $344 via Miami. If we looked to fly to Cancun and then to Mexico-City it was only $313. Also if you know the airlines for your light you can always have a look on their own site. Most of the time it’s also a couple of dollars cheaper.
2) Incognito
Have you ever noticed that when you look something up for example a plane ticket that the next time pricing is higher? You’re not crazy! Because of the cookies in your browser, flight prices increase when something is repeatedly searched. They want to scare you, so you would book the flight more quickly. So ALWAYS search in incognito to see the best price
3) Travel dates
If you have time and you don’t have to leave on a specific day then you best take a quick visual of the prices around your normal departure date. Then you can see what days are the cheapest for your route.
4) Error fares
Always keep your eye out for error fares. Most of the time they are only available for a couple of minutes (if you’re really lucky it can be a couple of hours) so you have to be fast! But before you book any accommodation, till hell freezes over, wait until you get a confirmation email from the airline company because sometimes they withdraw their offer.
5) Other currencies
Before you book the flight, consider if the rate is cheaper when you pay it another currency. Budget airline tend to make you pay in the currency of the departing country, but not always. Note: make sure you’re using a credit card that is free of foreign-transaction fees! Otherwise your attempts to save money doing this will be lost!
If you have any other tips, feel free to leave a comment! We're always happy to save a buck!
Comments