Five Tips To Cut The Cost Of Holiday Travel
Flexibility can help cut vacation costs
We’re all feeling the pinch of the current economic climate. Everything costs more, while many of us have less ready cash, so how do you have a good holiday anyway? Here are some tips for reducing the cost of your vacation – not just at this time of year, but all year round.
Grab That Fare Now!
If you see an unbelievably low fare on the dates you want to travel, book it immediately. You can almost guarantee that it won’t be there when you return. The word from travel agents (just in case you hadn’t already noticed) is that fares have gone up and seat numbers have gone down. That means it’s a seller’s market for air fares and there’s no incentive to discount.
Sacrifice Some Of Your Holiday
It’s great to be there on the key holiday dates, but you could save a fortune if you sacrifice some of that family time and travel on the holiday itself. The cost of your ticket will fall, and if you’re not going too far, you could still be there in time to enjoy the holiday festivities. Whether you’re traveling for Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving or Labor Day, this will make your trip more economical.
Stretch Those Dates
Even if you can’t travel on the holiday itself, a bit of flexibility about when you DO travel helps to cut ticket costs. Surprise, surprise – everyone wants to travel on the days immediately before or after the actual holiday date. If you can be flexible and travel a couple of days before or after that, you will save money – guaranteed.
Change Of Direction
Not every flight to New York lands at JFK. Wherever you’re going, the chances are that there are other airports nearby that are not as busy as the most popular one. Fly to one of these and you could save money, as well as have more options for travel dates. It may take you a bit longer to get to your final destination, but you may find that an hour’s extra drive is worth the savings you could make.
As you can see, the key way to save money on holiday travel is to be flexible about dates, times and destination. If you’re willing to do that, your holiday will be even happier because of the money you will save.
(photo: clarita)
Tags: holiday travel, travel, Travel Tips, vacation travel
December 17th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Don’t be afraid to drive, you are more than likely going to rent a car anyways so that make landing at a cheaper airport even easier. Going to New York why not land in CT or Penn.
December 15th, 2009 at 6:19 am
[...] trade it for some extra time afterwards and you can avoid the crowds on your return trip as well. Traveling off peak will also help you to save, and it’s worth considering using alternative airports to [...]
January 28th, 2010 at 6:21 am
[...] We’re all looking to save money on business trips and vacations. With travel budgets slashed and family finances often in disarray, it’s more important than ever to cut the cost of vacation travel. [...]