SOME WAYS OF GETTING THE BEST PRICES WHEN YOU TRAVEL

Travelling is awesome, but planning it can be a tough task. There are so many options available on the internet, and it all depends on the purpose of your trip and on the resources you have available. Here I’ll talk about means of transportation, accommodation, car rental and currency exchange.

Since I’m always on a budget, this presentation will be focused on price. If you’re an experienced traveler, you may be familiar with those hints. In any case, hope I can teach you something new.

1 - SKYSCANNER

Skyscanner is a leading global travel search site, a place where people can plan and book directly from millions of travel options at the best prices. They don’t charge any fees, so every price you see is already final (unless you want to add luggage, choose your seat, etc.). The best tools available on this website are: add nearby airports, create price alerts, search whole month, (where to:) everywhere and cheapest month. I’ll give a brief explanation about those tools:

Add nearby airports: for example, I was looking for a ticket from Palermo to Budapest and it only showed me flights from the airport of Palermo, because I hadn’t ticked this option. Once I did, it showed flights from the airport of Trapany too, and it’s quite close to Palermo. (BUT BE AWARE: if you have to get more than one plane to reach your final destination and you see that it’s written “no protected self-transfer”, it means, among other things, that you’ll have to pay for any checked bags you may have for each flight.

Create price alerts: you can create them by filling up your e-mail address on “get price alerts”, so that when the price changes you’ll be notified.

Search whole month: Instead of selecting the exact day of your trip, you can opt for search the whole month. This way one can choose to leave a few days earlier or later, for example, since often there’s a huge price difference. Always have in mind your closest airports options. For example, I’m a foreigner living in Palermo, Sicily. Every time I looked for tickets to other countries, I checked from Palermo, Rome and Milan, because those two are big cities and flights are usually cheaper. I never even considered flying from Catania. Nevertheless, I realized that to Budapest, for example, there are direct flights from Catania (and there aren’t from Palermo), and I can get a cheap train from Palermo to Catania (and most importantly, I don’t need to pay for the luggage on the train).

OBS: Be aware of the extra costs. Usually the company offers you 3 price options. The cheapest one is the basic and usually doesn’t include checked baggage; the second one usually includes one checked baggage, seat choosing and other things; the third one I have no idea, because I never choose it. Anyway, if you have baggage to check, you should choose the first (cheapest) option and add the luggage separately (it will usually be cheaper than choosing the second option). I’ve simulated a flight with Wizz air, and this company charges a very high fee to check one piece of 20kg luggage (around 40 euros). The final price almost duplicates. That’s why I prefer to travel with Wizz when I don’t have baggage to check. Don’t forget to see if you need to check in and bring your boarding pass with you. Ryanair, for example, charges a high amount of money to print your ticket in case you didn’t bring it.

Everywhere and Cheapest month: Now let’s say you’re planning a vacation and you can choose any place to go and any time of the year, but don’t want to spend too much. You can benefit from the research options “everywhere” and “cheapest month”. You’ll fill up your flight of origin and choose everywhere as destination, and the website will show you all the places you can go ordered by price (from the cheapest to the most expensive). You can also choose the cheapest month option, and it will show you in which time of the year the prices are lower.

2 - GOEURO

GoEuro is a platform that is similar to Skyscanner, but it shows results for flights, buses and trains. You can filter the results for cheapest and fastest solution, among other options. Skyscanner’s coverage is bigger, but GoEuro is useful when you want to travel inside the same European country or between countries that are close to each other.

3 - MEGABUS

Megabus is a low cost bus company very used in the US and in some European countries. Last year I traveled through many cities with this company, and paid for example 1 dollar to go from New Orleans to Orlando (a 24 hour trip), 5 dollars from Reno to San Francisco and from San Francisco to Los Angeles, 15 dollars from New York to Chicago (a 19 hour trip), and so on.

4 - AIRBNB, COUCHSURFING, HOSTELWORLD, BOOKING, TRIVAGO, GROUPON...

All of those options are fitter for touristic travelers. If you need to stay in the same place for over a month, you’ll probably find better deals somewhere else. But keep in mind that: some Airbnb properties offer great monthly discounts; because couchsurfers offer free stay, they usually prefer to host travelers for a short period of time (but not so short that they can’t get to know the people).

5 - LONG TERM STAYS

If you need to rent a place for a longer period of time (3 months or up), you have a higher chance to find it at a good price on:

facebook groups;

researching on google which are the most used websites to rent apartments on the place where you’re going (or even ask for tips to locals on couchsurfing or other websites about which are the most used websites on their country to rent a place);

university dorms (in case you’re gonna study there).

6 – CAR RENTALS

On the website rental cars you can compare the prices of the biggest brands in car hire. Prices are good; every time I used it I could find daily rates of around 25 euros.

On the website bla bla car you can get a ride, choose you driver and rate them. Prices are great.

7 - CURRENCY EXCHANGE

The WeSwap card is a very intelligent solution for when you’re travelling to a country where the currency is not the same as yours (I suppose there are other cards, but I only know this one). It works like this: you charge the card with your home currency (let’s say euros) and you can exchange it on the app for other currencies. If you can wait one week to have the money on your card, you pay only 1% of exchange fee. All because you’re exchanging your money with other app users that want the currency you have and have the currency you want. Isn’t it ingenious?

ONE LAST PIECE OF ADVICE…

5 items I can’t travel without: money belt, waterproof phone cases (also great to put money and car keys), comfortable used shoes, NOT new ones (trust me, wrong shoes can destroy your trip), padlocks, international plug adapter.

Author: Nathalie Diir Miglio Bensabat (Brasil/Italy)