17 Ways To Save On Travel In 2017 From Cheapflights.Com

Travel Experts Share 17 Ways to Save This Year

 The New Year brings new travel aspirations and money saving motivation. To help you manage both at the same time, the experts at Cheapflights.com, the online leader in finding and publishing travel deals, have compiled a list of 17 Ways to Save on Travel in 2017 filled with can’t-fail tips and tricks to stretch your travel dollar farther in 2017.

Starting with a currency check-up and moving through perfect planning, swap and save ideas and a round-up of other tips and tricks, Cheapflights’ list is a cheat sheet you will want to clip and save for travel planning all year round. Below is a sampling of the insider tips that will help you go farther for less in 2017:

·         Fly by night (or in the early morning) – The time a flight departs can also impact the price you pay for it. Traveling at night (between 6 p.m. and midnight) or in the early morning (think first flight out) will save. A general tip to remember: fly when people would rather be sleeping. After all, families with small children aren't usually lining up to take a 4 a.m. or 11 p.m. flight. And, an added bonus for the early bird: the first flight out is the least likely to be impacted by delays.

·         Clear your cache to save some cash – Internet users should delete their browser history every time they search for flights. Prices can increase based on the number of times searchers revisit a particular website.

·         Compare all of your options: Don't assume going directly to the airline is the cheapest way to travel. Sometimes small travel agents use flight search sites to sell off packages and flights that people have canceled. Travel providers have more flexibility to offer discounts on flights + hotels or flights + rental cars or other packages since they’re not sharing (and thus undercutting) the specific price of a room or a seat on the plane.

·         BYO - With shops and restaurants in airport departure terminals charging a premium, why not save some money by bringing your own food to eat onboard? Not only is it a sure-fire way to save money, it’s likely to be healthier too. Try our in-flight food hacks for in-flight dining at its best.

·         Stay ahead of the sales – Sign up to airline and travel providers’ travel deals newsletters and be sure to follow them on social media so you’re ahead of the game when it comes to flight sales, discounts and special offers. Oftentimes, flash sales and travel deals will be announced there first.

Here are 12 more tips you can use to play and win the holiday booking game: embrace the strong dollar by choosing destinations accordingly; use ATMs overseas for the best exchange rates; double your vacation time by combining holidays and weekends; combine business trips and pleasure into bleisure trips; pick a type of trip rather than a destination; compare prices at nearby airports; travel mid week for cheaper fares; look for the best fares 50 days out from your travel; consider traveling on holidays for big savings; use travel apps to make planning and traveling go smoother; be smart about data usage on the road; and use a la carte pricing to pay for only the travel perks you want. For the entire lowdown on how to save significantly on travel throughout 2017, consult Cheapflights.com’s 17 ways to save on travel in 2017at www.cheapflights.com/news/17-travel-save-ways-2017.

About Cheapflights.com, part of the Momondo Group

Founded in 1996, Cheapflights is a leading global flight comparison and deals publishing platform. It is now a market leader in the UK, U.S., Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand generating over $3 billion in global downstream revenue for its partners as it expands into numerous other territories. More than 120 million users visit its websites and apps each year, receiving more than two billion search results a month from across 900,000 routes. The 10 million strong opt-in subscribers to the Cheapflights newsletter receive the best deals from over 120 travel businesses – for whom it has driven more than $65 million in revenue this year. Together, the Cheapflights platforms generate enough bookings for its partners to fill a Boeing 747 every five minutes. 

In 2011, Cheapflights became part of the privately owned online travel search and inspiration network, Momondo Group.

The Best Time To Buy An Airplane Ticket (And When We Actually Buy)

© David Noton Photography / Alamy

A recent study by Expedia and the Airlines Reporting Corporation suggests there might actually be an optimal time to buy airplane tickets.

Travelers often swap theories on the right—and wrong—time to book a flight. We've heard it all: The lowest fares are on Tuesdays at 3 p.m. ET. (No, Wednesdays at 1 a.m.!) You need to book at least two months before you fly. (No, you should look for a deal and fly at the last minute!) Websites like the now-defunct Farecast and Kayak suggest when you should buy, or if you should wait—like we're all trading stocks—but there's no guarantee. And according to George Hobica of AirfareWatchdog, "There is no secret time. You need to look four times a day—minimum—every day of the week, as far in advance as you can."

But a recent study by Expedia and Airlines Reporting Corporation has us paying attention. After analyzing data from industry sources such as the International Air Transport Association, Diio Mi, and the Airline Tariff Publishing Company, the companies have settled on a time frame when you're "in the best position to get a good deal." They also determined when U.S. consumers typically buy domestic or international tickets (it's different from when you should—see below.) At least we can all agree on one thing: "Tuesday appears to remain the best day of the week to find low fares on air travel booked at least three weeks in advance," according to the study, "Preparing for Takeoff: Air Travel Trends 2015."

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WHEN WE BUY

32 DAYS

The average advance-purchase time for domestic flights

59 DAYS

The average advance-purchase time for international flights

WHEN WE SHOULD BUY

57 DAYS

The ideal advance-purchase time for domestic flights—to snag the lowest average airfare

171 DAYS

The ideal advance-purchase time for international flights

Written by Paul Brady and Laura Dannen Redman

From www.cntraveler.com

Travelore Tips: Airlines Are Making It Harder To Comparison Shop, So Here’s How To Hack A Cheap Flight

Photo courtesy of Adikos/flickr

According to a recent study done for the Travel Technology Association by Fiona Scott Morton, an economics professor at the Yale School of Management, airlines are making it harder for fliers to comparison shop, leading to a loss of $6 billion in savings. Delta, American Airlines and United Airlines are just a few of many airlines to remove their fares from a number of metasearch engines in the past few years, leading a reported 1 million passengers annually to abstain from flying.

Travelers shouldn’t have to give up flying (or pay a fortune for it) just because airlines are making it harder to find cheap fares. Here’s how you can save on flights even with the setback:

1. Use a VPN. One way airlines prevent you from comparison shopping, according to André Elmoznino Laufer, spokesperson for SaferVPN, is by looking up your unique IP address in addition to storing cookies in your internet browser. By doing this, they can tie your searches to you. He recommends using a VPN together with your browser’s private mode to prevent airlines from tracking your searches.

“By doing this you can shop around, and even book from foreign booking sites to take advantage of cheaper pricing abroad. For example, I found tickets 26% cheaper in Brazil in my search,” he explains.

Google Flights’ Explore Map option screenshot

2. Check Fare calendars. Personally, my first stop for finding cheap flights is always Fly.com’s Fare Calendar, which lets me compare four months of travel to find the best times to fly. From there I find the best priced dates then check my preferred airline’s website (I earn miles withDelta) for the same dates and compare. I also always check Skyscanner, choosing “Everywhere” as my destination so I can see what places are cheapest to fly from my origin. Google Flightsalso has a handy Explore Map option that shows prices for different destinations all at once, and they offer a calendar view, as well.

3. Research with ITA Matrix. If you have a weird itinerary, want to double check for the lowest price, or are trying to re-qualify for elite status then Matrix-ITA Software — which allows you to search for every possible flight combination known to man — can help you find flight combinations that would never appear in Google or Kayak, according to Parag Raja, CEO ofTravelMore. He says:

“For example, if you needed an American Airlines flight in a specific fare bucket to qualify for some AA frequent flier promotion, ITA would be your friend because even AA.com doesn’t allow you to search by fare bucket.”

If you’re confused about how to use this research (you can’t book on ITA), Million Mile Secretsprovides a step-by-step breakdown.

Hopper trip analysis screenshot

4. Peruse Hopper for trip analysis. Miles for Trips blogger Dmitriy Dudarenko recommends searching flights with Hopper, as the website and mobile app provide full trip reports including the best flight deals, cheapest times to go, information on demand stability and alternative routes.

“If you are flexible with dates on your next flight this website is number one. Price predictions and trends, interactive maps, an airline fees calculator, and e-mail and smartphone notification are just a few reasons to use this amazing tool.”

5. Predict airfare volatility. It’s definitely aggravating seeing a great fare go up before you book. Travel startup FLYR forecasts airfares, telling you, for example, “You should buy soon, because this fare may go up by as much as $50 in the next 7 days.” That’s a nice bit of information to have in your travel hacking arsenal.

6. Build in a long layover. If you’re flexible with your itinerary, new travel site Skypicker claims it can save you between 50% and 90% on flights, and our research shows that it can indeed save you a bundle of cash. The catch? Itineraries are often on lesser known airlines and require you to have long layovers — sometimes as much as a day — in cities that might be out of the way. This can be a good or bad thing, depending whether you want to spend a night in Oslo on your way to Berlin.

How do you find cheap flights beyond metasearch?

Jessica Festa is the founder on the solo and offbeat travel blog, Jessie on a Journey, and the online responsible tourism and culture magazine, Epicure & Culture. She’s constantly searching for local experiences beyond the guidebook. You can follow her travels on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

By Jessica Festa , www.roadwarriorvoices.com

Air Booking Tips: The Magical “Multi-City” Tool & Open-Jaw Ticketing

 

Airfare isn't cheap and time is precious. So it behooves all of us to make the most of every flight we book. Taking advantage of stopovers and open-jaw ticketing is a great way to squeeze more out of each departure, even if you only have an extra day or two to spare. We already told you about airlines offering free international stopovers, but there are a couple of additional tactics you might want to try. You can use them to secure round-trip pricing (which almost always costs less than purchasing one-way tickets) while fitting an additional city into your flight itinerary, or even plan a whole separate trip between departure and return flights. Below, we’ll take a closer look at how to do it.

Sneaky stopovers: If you’re planning to travel in the U.S., you can sometimes sneak an extra stop into most round-trip tickets at little to no cost. Even if a domestic carrier charges slightly more to add a third city, it’ll still save you hundreds compared to booking three one-way flights. With a stopover ticket, you only leave your home airport once, but you end up getting to see two places.

Multi city took

The key here is to book using an airline’s “multi-city” tool. These are found on the booking sites of practically every major U.S. airline, as well as booking engines such as Kayak, Hipmunk, Orbitz, and Expedia. It takes a bit of finagling to find the deals, but it’s worth the effort.

If you’re looking for a place to start: think of where you want to end up, and search for flights to that destination. Pay close attention to potential connecting airports. If you spot any that are near a place you've been longing to visit, that’s a great way to start piecing together a stopover ticket.

Open-jaw ticketing: Most travelers book round trip fares to and from a single airport. But what if you want to land in Paris and depart from London, while squeezing in a whole trip in between? That’s completely doable, and it’s the basis of open-jaw ticketing. Similar to the process mentioned above, you need to use an airline’s multi-city tool to book open-jaw tickets. In essence, you’re booking a round-trip flight (one flight path out, and one flight path back), but you’re landing at an airport that’ll differ from the airport where your return journey begins.

Last year, we booked a flight from North Carolina to Tokyo, and then booked a return leg two weeks later out of Tahiti. It priced out like a conventional round-trip ticket, but it allowed us to plan an epic side trip from Tokyo to Tahiti. On a separate airline, we booked tickets from Tokyo to Auckland, and then from Auckland to Tahiti.

Open-jaw and stopover tickets can be extremely flexible, but we’d recommend arriving at your final departure point a day early — remember, if the “in between” tickets are on a carrier different from the airline you’re flying home with, they won’t have much sympathy for delays or cancellations on your inbound journey.

Contributed by Darren Murph

- See more at: http://blog.shermanstravel.com/2015/air-booking-tip-stopovers-open-jaws-and-the-magical-multi-city-tool/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=National%3A%20Bulletin%20%2F%20Trip%20Ideas%20%2F%20ROS&utm_campaign=05.09.15%20Escapes%20-%20Myrtle%20Beach&utm_content=SL%20Test#sthash.R1lysGox.dpuf

14 Tips For Finding Low Airfares, 2015 Edition

Photo: Phelan M. Ebenhack, AP)

Are airfares pinching your wallet a little too tight these days? Deals are out there, you just have to know how and where to find them. Here are our top tips for finding cheap airfares this year.

1. There's no 'magic' time to buy airfare

A lot of airfare experts think they're clairvoyant, so they know where airfares are headed or how far in advance you should start looking for a fare. The latest myth is to buy exactly 54 days in advance. Others say buy on Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. or Wednesday at midnight or when the moon is full (just kidding). But airlines are unpredictable, and anyone who claims he or she knows that airfares will be lower or higher in the coming months or the coming days should trade in their crystal ball. No one can accurately predict where airfares are heading any more than we can predict the stock market. Think about it: If they really knew, they'd put every other airfare search operation out of business, and that hasn't happened. Don't believe me? Here's what an airline revenue manager has to say about this.

2. Search often and pounce when there's a deal

Fares fluctuate throughout the day, the number of seats offered at the lowest fares changes frequently, and someone might be holding the only seat at the lowest fare but not end up booking it—so it goes back into inventory, and then it will be yours. So if you don't like the fare at 10:00 a.m., check at 2:00 p.m. or the next day or the next week and pounce when the fare is affordable. It's easy to leave the browser page open and keep hitting "refresh."

3. Sign up for airfare alerts

This is perhaps the easiest way to track airfares. Many travel websites offer e-mailed airfare alerts that let you know when fares go down, and they all have something to offer. Do a browser search for "airfare alerts" and you'll see what's available. They all work a bit differently, so sign up for more than one.

One thing to note: These sites use essentially the same airfare data provided by the airlines' computer systems or ITA Software (which is now owned by Google), so they won't include discounted promo-code fares, and they don't include Southwest Airlines. (Airfarewatchdog, however, includes handpicked fares from Southwest in its Fare Alerts.)

4. Sign up for airline e-mail feeds and frequent-flier programs

Speaking of promo codes, the airlines want to develop a relationship with you, so they'll send you special deals, such as promo codes for 50% off or twofers, if you sign up for their e-mails. Read Airfarewatchdog's tips on signing up for alerts with domestic airlines and international airlines. We signed up for Virgin America's frequent-flier program, and because we haven't yet flown with the airline, we've received many promo-code offers to give it a try.

5. Use Twitter

E-mail is great, but some of the most amazing airfare deals last only a short time (even if they're valid for travel over a long period). Twitter is more immediate. Our advice? Follow @Airfarewatchdog's account, which tweets unusual airfare deals every day of the week and alerts followers to promo codes and other airfare deals.

6. Be a flexible flier

If you don't care when you go as long as the fare is low, try a flexible-date search. It's getting harder to search airfares based on flexible travel dates now that many sites (Orbitz, Hotwire, Travelocity and Expedia among them) have eliminated their flexible-date calendars. But Kayak still has a good one (you must register as a user to see it under "more search options"). Another good site is Adioso, and Google has two sites worth exploring, Google.com/flights/explore and Google.com/flights. See more about flexible-date travel searches.

7. Search airline sites as well as online travel agencies

Many airlines have "private" sales, reserving their very best fares for their own sites. These are different from promo-code sales. International airlines such as Aer Lingus, Iberia and Qantas regularly offer lower fares (i.e., $100 to $400 less) on their own websites compared to what you'd find on Kayak or Orbitz. And yet, you shouldn't ignore online travel agencies such as Expedia and Travelocity, because these sites will tell you if it's cheaper to fly out on one airline and back on another (United won't tell you that it's cheaper to fly out on United and back on American).

8. Use Priceline for last-minute trips

If you don't have a seven-, 14- or 21-day advance-purchase window to buy your fare, your best bet is the "name your own price" feature on Priceline. True, you won't know the exact flight times or airline you're flying until you pay for your trip, but you can save 50% or more.

9. Use consolidators but beware of restrictions

Consolidators specializing in premium cabins will have some great deals, and the airlines themselves will be heavily discounting their premium cabins, so check the specials on their websites. Sites like Vayama, Airfare.com and Asia.com also sometimes sell consolidator fares, but read this to understand how these fares work and what the extra restrictions might be.

10. Consider extra fees before you buy

If Southwest has a fare of $198 round-trip and United has one for $148 but you're checking three bags, then flying Southwest actually makes the most sense. Southwest charges nothing for the first two checked bags, whereas United would charge you an additional $165 each way for three. Use SmarterTravel's updated baggage-fees chartfor more information.

11. Combine two fares rather than buying one

If you're flying to a destination in Europe, you might save money by purchasing one fare from the U.S. to, say, Dublin, and another from Dublin onward on Ryanair (just beware of Ryanair's onerous fees). The same holds true for some destinations in Asia (fly into Singapore and, from there, catch a low-cost carrier such as AirAsia) and some smaller Caribbean destinations via San Juan or the Bahamas. Even domestically, two fares are often less than one; in a recent search, Dallas to Honolulu was selling for $350 round-trip with tax, but Houston to Honolulu was $800. As you're no doubt aware, you can fly from Houston to Dallas for a lot less than $450! Just be sure to give yourself plenty of time between connecting flights in case one flight is delayed.

12. Buy with airlines that refund the difference if a fare drops

Let's say you've found the lowest non-refundable fare, and the day after you purchase it, the price of the same itinerary goes down. If you ask for it, you can get a refund for the difference. But some airlines will charge you a costly "administrative" fee of $200 or more, wiping out any savings. Others will give you the entire fare difference in the form of a travel voucher without extracting a fee. All airlines used to do this but no longer. The only ones left are Southwest, Alaska and, for Mosaic frequent fliers only as of Aug. 14 last year, JetBlue.

13. Search to and from alternate airports

Look at Tokyo Haneda as well as Narita; look at Gatwick as well as Heathrow. Consider flying from Little Rock if Memphis is too pricey, and Orlando Sanford on Allegiant rather than Orlando International. Frontier flies from Trenton, N.J., as an alternate to Newark, and so on. Or travel a bit more, by train or bus, to a cheaper airport. Recently, peak July fares from Newark to London Heathrow on non-stop flights were priced at $1,800 round-trip. But Virgin/Delta had non-stops from Philadelphia for $985 round-trip for July travel. NJ Transit fares from Newark to Philly? $22.50 round-trip plus $7 each way to the Philadelphia airport from Philadelphia 30th Street Station.

14. Consider package deals

Especially for last-minute travel, an airfare plus hotel package can save money. Recently JetBlue had an all-inclusive package to the Bahamas for last-minute travel from New York for just a bit more than the last-minute airfare alone. That's because air/hotel packages use different airfare "buckets" than last-minute fares do. Other packages might just save $50 per person, but it's still a savings. Just be sure to compare the hotel and airfare separately with the package price.

Contributed by George Hobica, the founder of Airfarewatchdog.com. Airfarewatchdog features the best airfares on thousands of routes verified by a team of expert fare analysts.

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