Although, travelling can be expensive, it doesn’t always have to be. Nowadays, travelling is really accessible to everyone, from those who can afford any destination, as money is not an issue, to those whose budget might be a bit tighter. There are options for everyone.
The main reason, why people don’t travel all that often, together with the lack of time in many cases, is due to the lack of funds. However, there are several ways to go on a trip and/or hop from location to location at a low cost.
This applies wether you are thinking of a quick weekend gateway, to a couple of weeks to a long term slow travels. There are options and ways to save those pennies and still have the time of your life.
The way we do this is by researching and deploying some time to use the tools available online, like price comparison travel websites, where after digging in a bit deep, we can save some money for our trip.
These savings can be related to the overall travel expenses, transportation, flights, hotels, tours, food and many other things.
The best price comparison travel websites are really useful and time-efficient in retrieving the best current deals for the specific dates chosen, all in one site, instead of spending hours or days of browsing for flights or other travel costs, across the internet, to end up saving only a couple of bucks.
Having said this, sometimes, the best deals are not only a matter of price, but a matter of available time from the tourist. This is, not everyone has the flexibility and time from work, family or whatever the circumstance may be to book a trip starting in the following two days. Some of the most awesome deals do happen like this.
If you are able to break that barrier somehow, you are open minded and you are not too fussy about the destination, then, this is a great option to keep in mind. We do this all the time and save a lot money this way.
However, some amazing deals are also available for months so you can better schedule your trip, but our recommendations are to book those, as soon as, possible, as those deals do tend to change the more popular they get.
Planning a trip can be challenging, especially, when it comes to setting up your budget and how to get the most out of your travel money allocation.
Keep reading this post, where we have outlined and covered our best websites and tools, to get the most cost effective travel deals, from flights and accomodations to transport, tours and much more.
See below, some of the most popular and used sites for travel hack prices that we use constantly to get our travel deals.
How to find cheap airfares
Undoubtedly, the main cost of a trip is the flights. They make up for the bulk of the travel expenses. In fact, and unfortunately, for us travellers, airfares have globally gone up in price to a 33% in 2022 compared to last year and the prior year.
This due to multiple issues, such as, the increase in fuel price across the globe, together with a popular on going growing travelling demand.
Not only, the fuel costs are a problem that have impacted the price of the plane tickets, but also, the area where you fly out/in from/to.
There can be quite a discrepancy in prices, depending on the airlines operated in certain airports and the demand for those flights. It is usually, more expensive to fly into a smaller and remote airport than a national airport where many airlines will be operative.
Fore example, us being from Australia, flying out of Sydney or Brisbane can be pretty pricey to most places in the US or Europe or even Asia.
But we have managed to learn how to research in to those price comparison tools to nail down pretty good deals.
The best websites to obtain the best flight deals are the Kayak and google flights. Sky scanner is pretty similar to Kayak but sometimes, get prices a bit out of range.
Scott’s Cheap Flights is a pretty good site where after signing up, you can receive an emailed newsletter with the best both domestic and international flight deals.
All these websites are super easy to navigate and to retrieve data. Also, they allow you to track the desired flights to whatever destination you are after (or random ones if you prefer) and they will also give you alternative dates where those flights are cheaper.
You can turn on those notifications to be emailed to you. The more flexible and open minded you are, the better deals you will land.
* Pro tip: If any of your flights get delayed or cancel, do not forget to keep your boarding passes and tickets and claim compensation. Also, when there are other erratic behaviours around the airport that directly affect your air ticket.
* Pro tip: Accumulate all the mileage points possible and frequently redeem all the rewards.
How to find the cheapest hotels and accomodations
Choosing and booking travel stays is an important factor when it comes to finalise planning your trip. It can be challenging to find the best and cheapest deals. Whilst, it is understandable that an accomodation is just a room with a bed to spend the night, depending where you go, your stay may require a bit more comfort.
It is worth spending a little bit of time and effort trying to save some money when booking a hotel since it is hard earned money.
The key is to find accomodations, hotels or hostels, whatever your accomodation type may be, that are not so much on demand yet they have a substantial supply. This way you will find cheap deals.
Below are our top places to find those hotel/hostel bargains:
1-Hotels.com
Hotel. com is one of the best sites to find incredible cheap hotel deals. The website operates with a refined search engine and retrieves loads of option from many sites, available hotels and properties. You can filter it out to get the best options according to your preferences. Some of the perks of this site is that you can score free nights when purchased a package that they offer.
2-BedandBreakfast.com
If low profile accomodations is your style, BedandBreakfast.com is one of the biggest sites to compare an incredibly high number of B&B properties and it is definitely, one of the leader comparison sites that offers the cheaper deals.
3-Agoda
Agoda is a great site to compare the cheapest deals around Asia. This search site work pretty well for Thailand, Malaysia and other Asian places. It now works on the US, as well, however, there are other better places to find the best deals for those trips.
4-Booking.com
This site is by far the best way to start your search for cheap hotel deals. It retrieves such a good mix of results for the best available hotels/accomodations/ B&B and even apartments, that many hotel chains, actually, use this engine to make the bookings themselves.
It might be a bit messy when it comes to filter out some of your preferences, whether other sites don’t but it is, overall, a very broad comparison site.
5-Hostelworld
Hostelworld is the best place online to book budget hostel accommodations worldwide. The site is a great resource and it offers an awesome wide selection of hostels to help you find incredible hostel deals. We use it all the time, especially, when we are looking at saving some money in our trips.
6-TripAdvisor.com
Whilst, this site doesn’t serve as room booking itself, it does retrieve a pretty decent list of the best rated and valued hotels around the area you intend to stay.
It doesn’t give you the cheapest rates, though, but it does show the ratings of the hotels it displays.
This site pairs with Expedia and its affiliates to show and compare the available properties on those sites.
7-Trusted Housesitters
If you are flexible and open minded around your trip, then this could be an excellent choice to score your accomodation for free.
It is also great to get the view from a local and perhaps some tips about the place.
If you are a pet lover, then this is particularly a great option for you. Not only, you won’t have to pay for your stay, but also, you will get those pet cuddles your entire trip!
Simply, complete your profile on their site, get verified with your ID, criminal records and references either personal or professional.
Please note, that the more experience you are, the more chances you have. Some people do feel a bit apprehensive about the fact of leaving their pets with unexperienced sitters. But it is not a rule and it shouldn’t stop you. Write an awesome bio with all the details and great pictures to ensure the owners get a good vibe about you.
8-Priceline Express Deals
This place can provide hotel offers to up to a 60% discount but the interesting part of this site is that all the hotels that it retrieves are a mystery listing where Priceline does not disclose which hotel you are booking until the purchase process is completed.
Best Websites to Save on Vacation Rentals
If you travel with a group, your family or you feel like a more cosy experiences, vacation rentals are a great options. There are some worldwide known sites to fulfil this purpose, such as, Airbnb and VRBO.
These sites do provide similar prices to hotel nightly rates but the atmosphere is somewhat different. Some of the homes listed on those sites are incredible places.
Best Websites Save on Cruises
For cruise trips, there is an excellent resource to get the best deals across over a 500 sites and companies. This site is called CruiseCompete.com. Whilst, this place doesn’t sell the actual trips, they do compare tons of deals across many cruise lines according to your travel preferences.
Best Website to Save on International Train Tickets
Train rides are sometimes and often times a much more pleasant way to travel to moderate distanced locations compared to flying.
Some train rides offer an incredible landscape as you follow in your journey and it is normally cheaper too.
RailEurope is by far the most trusted site to get the cheapest deals especially around Europe. It is a fast and easy site to navigate and get your tickets.
Best Websites to Save on Rental Cars
1-Hotwire
This one is an excellent site to compare car rental prices from the 8 cheapest car rental websites. Not only, offers deals for cars, but also, for vacation packages and airline fares.
It works based on offering super discount from travel itineraries that haven’t been sold out.
For best results and to get the highest discounts got the part where they offer "hot rates” for rental cars but you won’t know which company operates those deals until the purchasing process is confirmed.
2-AutoEurope
Where this sites excels at is by having a customer service operative 24 hours a day. This is extremely important when travelling overseas and renting a car. Issues with rental cars do happen and you want a company that can be trusted and helpful towards the traveller. It also offers great deals across more than 20000 sites worldwide.
3-AutoSlash
This one is another excellent site to find car rental deals. Sometimes, it doesn’t get you the cheapest deals, but they do offer discounts. Also, they will rebook your reservation, if a better deal shows up which is great.
Best Website for Travel Insurance
When travelling, travellers need to ensure that you are backed up in the case that an emergency or unexpected event took place. For this, it is essential to have a travel insurance. There are multiple companies offering excellent covering policies and plans at competitive prices. It is easy to get sucked in by all the confusing information that some of those providers show customers. But using Squaremouth as the best website to fetch the cheapest prices for health and travel insurances is definitely the way to go here.
Best Website for the cheapest tour deals
When travelling, doing activities and getting the best tours that are actually, worth your time and money can be challenging, as sometimes, it is easy to fall in the tourist traps.
Tourscanner.com is a great website that gathers the best and cheapest tickets for attractions, tours, day trips and much more that you might be interested while travelling.
Conclusion
Travelling with low cost companies and using search engines to fetch the cheapest deals (described in this post) is such an amazing way to nail your trips. Travelling on a budget may not be for everyone but, definitely, it is for most of the people. Therefore, knowing where to look for those sensational bargains is crucial for those travel lovers.
Also, if possible, the more open minded and flexible you are with regards travel destination and dates, the higher probabilities there are to find incredibly cheap deals. Avoid travelling when the rest of the people do, eg: national holiday periods.
It is equally important to avoid travelling to a very popular location, where due to its demand there might no be needed for any airline, hotels, etc to lower their prices. However, if you choose to go to a less known place, chances are that you get a nice deal.
* Pro tip: subscribe to travel newsletter and social media for the best travelling brands. In this day and age, many of those brands advertise their flash promotions on social media, like instagram or twitter. Also, check on those emails that get sent, that most of the times we tend to ignore, but some of those contain good flash offers.
Lastly, spend all your rewards from the sites that give you points every time to purchase their services. We tend to overlook these points but they do make a difference after a couple fo trips. Also, it is recommended to use rewards cards, particularly, for flights and certain hotels as the miles and points earned can after a while, score you a great discount or even and awesome fare upgrade.
Having said that, ensure you are an avid traveller and will actually benefit from those rewards, as some of the cards might have a monthly fee. If you only travel sporadically, then it is perhaps not advised. Each card is different and you should get the one that best fits your goals and circumstances as a traveller. Nerdwallet.com is a great site to see all those cards available and price comparison.
There you go! Now you know all the tricks, tips and sites to search and compare the best travel deals for you score the best bargains and travel in the cheapest way!