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.
- 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.
- 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.
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