Let me ask you, how much time a year do you spend looking for flights? What are your criteria? Price only? A certain airline maybe? How about transfer time? If you’re like me, getting the right flight deal matters a whole lot and you’re willing to invest quite a bit of time to get where you need to be.
There are a number of things to consider before you hit the book-it button. I can’t do magic to help you find the best deal but I can tell you some of the things I do to ensure I get the most out of my buck.
1. Flexible dates? Fly on a Tuesday! This is one of ma favorite secrets to cheaper tickets. More often than not Tuesday travel is cheaper than any other day. Don’t believe me? Compare prices flying Tuesday with those of a Friday or Saturday – big difference!
2. Timing matters! The cheapest flights tend to be over night or very, excruciatingly early in the morning. But guess what – you arrive at your destination and you still have the whole day ahead of you! Now isn’t that bliss? Imagine spending extra just so you can arrive at your hotel at 8pm, completely beat and are spending valuable bucks on the first night without having had a fun and adventurous day to go with it. Think “Fly early, live more.”
3. Say yes to last-minute travel. Sounds counter-intuitive but prices will often drop the closer you get to your departure date. I book most flights within 3 to 6 weeks of travel and have consistently paid less that way then when I checked months ahead of time.
4. Be open to foreign booking engines. You may be set on using only search engines in your language or from your country but you might be missing out on some serious deals! Canadian booking engines Flighthub for example has great prices and services other booking engines don’t have. I like that it tells you right away which alternative date would save you serious bucks. There is no tricky hitting the backbutton to adjust dates and locations, it is one of the easiest to use booking engines I have come across.
5. Check flights often! When I know I need to get booking I check all the time as prices are very prone to change. Very few booking engines have it, but much better than constantly checking times are farewatchers! I have found incredible deals through that when they were still around but I currently only know of one site still offering it and that also is FlightHub.
6. Stay away from booking for several people at once. This is something I only found out recently, but it does make sense! Airlines will often only have a limited amount of cheap seats and they don’t want to give them away in bunches. Before looking at tickets for the whole family, just do a search for what it would cost one person to go. Obviously ensure that enough seats are available for everyone before finalizing your booking.
7. Think outside the box route. Looking up alternative routes could really save you cash. Going to Bangkok? Have a look what it would cost to fly from another city, say London or Amsterdam and consider whether a cheap Easyjet flight to that city could save you some serious bucks. Flying from Berlin to Johannesburg for example is a lot cheaper than going Berlin – Cape Town. I would save money if I booked a domestic return flight between Cape Town and Johannesburg AND i get an extra destination out of it – win/win!
*This post was created in collaboration with Flighthub. Visit them here and here and check our their Twitter and Facebook for great travel Inspiration.
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