Adventures are lifetime investments, but still lots of people think they cannot afford to travel. We bring to you 4 secret hacks that will save you money while traveling and make it possible for you to travel more often.
I teamed up with the lovely, Ashima Sharma, who is an entrepreneur and travel blogger at The Logical Traveler, to share these amazing hacks with you. She knows all about smart traveling and her main objective is to inspire people to “travel more for less“, so I thought she would be the perfect fit for sharing genius travel tips and tricks with you.
We both believe that everyone should travel. Not just once or twice in their lives, but at least once or twice per year. However, when people think of traveling, there are just so many worries that need to be taken care of. Like, “which travel destinations should I choose?“, “What should I pack?“, but the thing that mostly tops the list is “how will I afford all the travel expenses?”
What if we told you that, travel expenses could be the least of your worries if you followed these simple travel hacks? Here are our top 4 travel hacks, that will allow you to travel more often.
Book your trip a couple of months in advance
Planning ahead is the best way to save money when traveling. If you are flexible with traveling dates, you can take advantage of cheaper flights on particular dates or in off-seasons. You will often be able to catch the cheapest flight and train tickets on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays.
Tip: Be sure to keep an eye on travel sites regularly for daily offers, campaigns festive offers, and sudden price drops.
Do your booking research (in private browsing!)
Take out time to check prices on different hotel booking sites such as TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, Agoda, Booking.com, and you will be surprised of how much you can get within your price budget.
These sites offer great package deals, so you can order the flight and hotel room all at once. In some cases, you might even get breakfast, spa treatment or welcome drinks included in the bundle. All-inclusive, here I come!
Check two to four booking sites to compare the deals, before finalizing your booking. As mentioned, you might be able to get something extra included in the deal, so be sure to compare and evaluate carefully in order to get the best prices.
Tip: Set your browser on private to get the cheapest prices possible. Travel sites often track your visits and will raise the prices, but you can prevent this just by browsing privately.
Eat local foods
When you are away, you do not want to compromise on eating. Rather you want to try different local cuisines. Consider trying local food trucks or food markets.
Pay attention to where and what other locals in the area are eating. In that way, you will prevent not getting caught in a tourist-filled area with sky-high prices.
The benefit of this is that local foods are most likely delicious, comes in a broad variety and are half the price of, if not less than, other dishes that are not originally from the country you are visiting.
Up your free sightseeing game
If you do your research properly, you will be able to find tons of fun and free activities for you to do. Meetup is a great site to meet people in the area, who have the same interests as you, and at the same time gives you an opportunity to explore cultures and the city that you are in, for free.
Tip: If you want to go to museums or other tourist attractions that you know can easily leave you broke, make sure to research online for any discounts or free passes.
E.g. New York has lots of museums that have free entry hours or “pay what you want” days. A few clicks can suddenly save you big money that you can spend on other good stuff.
As of now, you probably figured that the beforehand research is your best bet at saving money while traveling, and will help you save up money in the end to travel even more. #ReasearchIsKing.
In the end, we think these travel hacks are very achievable and are great tricks that will save you lots of money, that you can spend on your next trip.
Do you have any secret travel hacks?
Juliana is a fashion blogger and content creator, who is based in Copenhagen. She spent the last two years living in London, where she studied Fashion Communication, while building her career in digital storytelling.