25 Sep Travel Tips: Booking Your Own Travel

For the past 5 years I have managed, salaried or not, to get on a plane and go on holiday. I’ve managed to stay in great hotels or apartments, eat and drink and get wasted at clubs like I do in SA and buy myself nice things along the way. I wish I could say it’s because I’m stupid rich or that I always mysteriously come into some money. But the truth is I’m just really good at finding good quality bargains. In fact, I think I am kind of addicted to bargain hunting… I’m so glad couponing isn’t a thing here in SA… I’d probably be addicted to it.

Here are some tips, I have picked up along the way on booking your travel in a relatively inexpensive way. I say relatively, because, even though I love a bargain, I won’t for instance travel for 40 hours, with 2 stops, just because a flight is cheap. My lack of patience and penchant for comfort, just won’t allow me to do that.

1. Join all the loyalty, frequent flier, rewards programmes you can join and use them. The ones I consider worthwhile are: Discover Vitality: because of their discounted Emirates and British Airways flights Guestbook (see why here) and Expedia because if you have joined their rewards programme you can get really good preferential rates.
2. Book ahead of time… Rates are always cheaper. In April, I’m going to Coachella. In January the flights to LAX were around R14K from South Africa. A month later, they are around R16K. Small difference, but that’s a round of drinks in some places.

Consider using Air BnB. I wouldn’t say it is necessarily cheaper, but sometimes, when you are travelling to a place during a festival or big event, you might find that hotels are completely booked out. Air BnB is a good and reasonable alternative. Best Air BnB spots I have stayed in so far… Copenhagen and Stockholm.