Save money on travel: How to think about it, how to begin
Making travel more affordable is one of our top goals, but it requires the development of habits and muscles to really start saving money. There are also layers of understanding that will come as you see how those saving decisions fit with the travel life you want.
The three expenditure categories that make up the majority of travel expenses are:
Flights
Lodging
Food
Ground transportation
Admission fees
The biggest category of savings is flights. It’s also the savings category that requires the most practice and ‘training’.
The key to saving money on flights is a mind shift on how you plan your travel. Most people approach travel planning like this; Figure out when you have time off, then pick a destination, and then figure out flights, then reserve hotels and rental cars. This very typical and seemingly reasonable method will always cost you the most money possible.
The shift you need to make is this:
Don’t focus on a destination, instead set a travel goal - e.g, “I want a warm beach”, “I want to go to Europe.”, “I want jungle and ruins”, “I want culture and unfamiliar places”
Establish your time off dates. If they can wiggle a day or two in beginning or end, that is ideal.
Using a Flight search tool, find affordable flights that do to places that meet your goal. If you are wanting warm beach, there are many places in the world that offer you that goal. Your task is then find the most affordable flights that get you to the goal. (Future article to come).
Start, or focus on, a mileage/credit card strategy to turn your household expenses into travel savings. (Way, way, more on this)
When we first starting getting our money saving travel muscles in shape, we stumbled a bit on how little we knew about geography and other countries. This education is also part of the fun - and the development of that knowledge base that makes planning, and saving, on travel deeply satisfying. For instance, France, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Malta all have warm beaches. Thailand, Malaysia, Bali, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, all have warm beaches. In the US we often think about Hawaii, the Bahamas, or Florida as the only beach destinations. Breaking out of boxed up thinking will not only save you money, but pull you into places that you’ve never imagined you’d be visiting.
Selecting your vacation dates is also key to saving money. US schools Spring Break and Summer Vacation times are almost (almost) never a good time to travel and expect to save money. However….the earth is round. That means half the planet is experiencing the opposite season….and if your travel goal lines up with whatever is happening in the other hemisphere of the planet, you kind find a good flight price. Another travel muscle you can develop is hemispheric awareness. Learn what ‘rainy season’, or ‘monsoon season’ in other countries mean. Look up what Fall looks like in Spain, what winter looks like in Egypt, etc. Depending on where you hail from, you may find the weather in another country’s ‘off season’ is perfect for you. We live in Oregon so a 70-degree day with an evening rain shower is like a nice summer day. We’d be happy with that if it meant the difference between going and not going. We have friends from Arizona who would consider 70-degrees a brutal winter day, and they would not be happy with a ‘cold’ destination.
Read our additional articles to go deeper on how to build these muscles, and the tools you will learn how to use. How to build your sensitivity to knowing how to spot a ‘good deal’.
Lodging
Lodging is an interesting savings puzzle. It’s easy to find a cheap hotel, but sometimes savings isn’t the bottom line with hotels. Sometimes it’s not safe, or convenient to choose the cheapest choice - in fact sometimes a cheap hotel can cost you a lot of money. . So that trick is saving money on the hotel you want. The hotel you want is usually in proximity to the things you want to do and the places you want to visit. The opportunities for saving money on proximity hotels can be tricky.
Brands that have meaningful loyalty programs aren’t usually the cheapest, but tend to offer constant products, and if you stay often, and fully utitilzie their rewards systems, you will eventually start to realize some significant savings.
There are a number of on-line services that work with hotels to balance low occupancy rates with low cost, last minute bookings. The most well known of these tools is Priceline, but there are others like Hotwire, Hotel Tonight, Snaptravel, Expedia, Travelocity and Lastminute.com
AirBnB and VRBOs used to be a way to save money, and get into neighborhoods where real people lived, but short term rentals are no longer as affordable as they used to be. However, for large families who need multiple rooms, short term rentals can pencil out to be more affordable than hotel suites, or multiple hotel rooms.
Food
Food is a huge variable and everyone’s tastes vary and how they want to eat varies. Eating local food, and new food can be one of travel’s great joys which you should not deprive yourself of.
Different countries have different economies surrounding resturaunt food. Typically, eating in Europe is expensive. Even food at the grocery stores is more expensive than what you’d expect in the US. Typically eating in South America and Central America is less expensive. Thailand is less expensive, Japan is more expensive. There are lots of interesting reasons for this but having that knowledge doesn’t help you save money. There are some guidelines:
Eat off the tourist track.
Eat local. It’s often the least expensive.
Don’t be afraid of the food cart or the odd little take out window.
Hotels tend to be the most expensive laces to eat, second to the place right next to the hotel.
If you are renting an AirBnB, buying at the local market and cooking in your rental might save you money, but keep in mind you need to consider how many secondary items you need to cook food - oils, sauces, spices. It adds up. Cooking from a local market daily can be a dream for some folks, others it’s too much work and doesn’t seem like vacation.
Aside from snack on the plane, don’t try and bring food with you in an attempt to save money. Security, differing customs regulations, and the sheer weight of it all makes bringing food impossible. Eat locally, it will change you.
Ground Transport
Since Covid rental car prices have gone through the roof. A rental car for 10-days used to be a somewhat trivial expense in the bigger budget, but now it can rival the cost of your plane tickets - so it’s worth really taking a look at what kind of trip you are taking and the what kind of ground transport you will need.
Depending on your destination, rental cars may also cost to park at your hotel, or the various attractions you want to visit.
When we plan a trip we always consider how possible it is to do without a rental car, or how we can rent the car during only the time period of the trip we really need it.
Looking at the ease and cost of public transport should be in your destination research todo list. Seeing how much cab ride between your lodgings and a desired destination will cost should be researched, and seeing if the region you are staying has Uber or Lyft is also wise research. If your destination is in Europe, you should look at train routes and schedules, which can easily extend your reach and be very affordable.
Another consideration to weigh regarding renting a car is ease of driving at your destination. I found driving a rental car on the left in England slightly nerve wracking, but totally doable. Since we were touring the English Countryside, a car was absolutely necessary to reach our destinations. On the other hand we completely enjoyed our trip to Denmark without the need for a car. The metro, trains, and cabs got us easily and affordably everywhere we wanted to go.
When looking at long hauls between counties, or major cities be aware that there is often a network of regional airlines that offer very inexpensive flights which can save you time and perhaps the need for a rental car.
It can also be a great joy to drive unfamiliar roads, see the unexpected and authentic, and wander at your own pace…which you need a rental car for!
A thoughtful ground transport strategy can save you a lot of money.
Admission fees
This category of savings is kind of slim-pickings. It’s also not where the majority of your travel money will be spent. But still, it’s worth saving where you can.
Do some web searching on the web sites of the place you intend to visit and see what kinds of discounts they offer for booking ahead, age, or packages that include something else you are also interested in. Sometimes destination features join forces and you can get better rates on each by buying the package deal.
Another mechanism to look at is the ‘City Card’. A number of destination cities in Europe have a card that is a single purchase for a period of days (1-day, 2-day, 3-day, etc) that gets you into a large number of the cities attractions. Some of the cards also include unlimited use of their public transport system. These cards can save you some serious money, and some serious hassle. The Copenhagen Card, Amsterdam Card, London Card Pass, Paris Pass and in the US, the City Pass are all great deals if you intend to visit more than 3 attractions per day. They become even better deals if you are staying multiple days. Not all the Card Pass systems include unlimited transit access, so read carefully and understand what they include.
