There may be a recession on, but we all still want to go on holiday. The media might think that staycations are the newest craze and holiday makers will be flocking to British holiday locations, but if you still want to jet off abroad you can do it. And on the cheap. Here are our top tips for cheap travel this summer.
1. Get online
The first port of call when booking a holiday has to be the internet. Whether it’s a package holiday or you’re booking accomodation and flights separately online deals outstrip those available on the high street or with telephone booking services. This is simply because these services involve having a sales team which the company has to pay, so their salaries are added to your holiday prices.
The trick to getting the best deals is to look everywhere. Do not just use one search engine, use as many as possible. It’s time consuming, but you must know if you’re getting a good price or not.
For flights click these links:
This is our flight comparison tool – it’s very easy to use. Just enter the destinations you want to fly between, the dates on which you would like to fly, and the number of people who are flying.
You should also take a look at the new Travel Zoo frame below that lists the current best value flights and hotels.
For hotels click these links:
- Lastminute (offers extremely cheap ’secret’ hotels which are really worth considering)
- Expedia (has great deals including extra nights for free)
- eBookers
- Laterooms (great for last minute bargains)
For cheap car rental try an aggregator site like one of these:
Once you’ve looked around and found the best prices available you can go back and book with wherever you found it. Make sure you clear the cache on your browser before you do. This stores a record of what you are looking at online and if a site detects that you’ve been offered one price it often automatically raises the price when you return to purchase it. If you clear the cache it cannot do this.
2. Get the best insurance deal
Shop around for your travel insurance instead of taking the first policy offered to you by the travel agent.
There are two types of travel insurance: Single trip and Annual (or multi-trip). Single trip only covers you for a week and annual covers you for as many trips as you take in a year. Annual cover is usually around two and a half times the price of single trip so if you go away three times a year it’s better to get annual insurance than to take out new cover for each trip.
Your annual premium depends on whether you want your family covered, what extent of cover you require, where you’re going and how much excess you’re willing to pay.
Our comparison service will find you the best deal for you. Click here tosee what’s on offer.
Alternatively if you just want a bog standard cheap policy, Insure and Go has annual policies from £29 and kids are covered for free.
3. A bundle can be cheaper
If you are booking a car, flight and hotel together, a travel agent will probably be able to get you the best all-round deal, even better than if you spent ages searching for prices on the internet. This is even more true in the current economic climate as they will be trying even harder than ever to make a sale. They can also sort out all your activities and excursions for discounted prices whilst you are away.
To get a discount, try bartering with a travel agent. You can ask them to match a price you have been offered elsewhere and, now more than ever, you should be able to negotiate a really good deal.
4. House exchanges are free
You can arrange to swap houses with another couple or family and get your holiday accommodation completely free. House swaps are organised through agencies who either have internet sites or member catalogues. To join you give information of where you would like to go, dates when you could possibly go (being flexible will facilitate finding a swap), how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have in your house, as well as appliances and any extras you have like a big garden, garage or swimming pool. You can also opt to exchange the use of your car with the use of the other family’s vehicle to save you having to rent one.
Most of the house-swap agencies charge a one-off annual membership fee of less than £100 and will refund this if you do not manage to organise a swap during that year. Paying the money often means that you deal with people who are genuine about house-swapping and will respect your property as they will want you to respect theirs.
The Moneymagpies recommend Intervac – click here to see their site and sign up.
5. Group travel is cheaper even without the discounts
Renting a large villa/cottage/holiday house with friends will save you money. The more people the place sleeps, the cheaper per head the accommodation will be and so joining up with friends and their families (as long as you can stand them for a week) will save you money. A bigger property also means better facilities like a pool or bigger gardens.
If you use Holiday Rentals you can book directly with the landlord rather than through an agent, which is often cheaper.
Click here to see if there is a great bargain.
6. The small hours are the cheapest
Fares early in the morning and late at night are generally cheaper than those that are conveniently during normal waking hours. Brave dragging yourself out of bed at two in the morning to catch a 4a.m. flight, and you will probably pay less. This is especially true on ferries that run throughout the night.
Click on this link and do a price comparison on Expedia between off peak and peak flight times.
7. Get insider offers
Signing up for travel website newsletters will mean you get told when sales are starting, when they are running offers and when you can get big travel discounts. Hotel chains all have them and will send you special deals and vouchers. Open a separate free email account to have them sent to and you’re laughing.
Sign up for these sites to get started:
8. Book well in advance
Booking early (i.e a few months in advance) will save you money on transport and accomodation. Planes, trains and buses all have a certain quota of seats that they will sell for the lowest price. Once these seats are booked up, the next lot of seats will be a bit more expensive and so on. This goes for hotels, theatres and ferries too.
However, if you do want to book late, the later the better. This year there will be fewer unsold holidays on the market simply because travel agents will have anticipated a fall in demand and bought fewer to sell. However if you aren’t fussy about where you go, potentially you can still get a very good deal last minute.
At Moneymagpie we like Lastminute.com’s last second deals. Go to their site to see just how cheap you can get a holiday.
Click this link for a cheap last minute deal.
9. Get cheap holiday extras
The cost of getting to the airport can mount up. Save on parking, hotel stays and shuttle services by booking with a specially designed site like Holiday Extras. Through them you can book budget transport and parking services to save you big money.
If you are getting public transport to the airport be clever about it. The Gatwick and Heathrow expresses may be the speediest way to get to the airport, but they are also by far the most expensive.
- The Southern Rail service to Gatwick takes just 5 minutes longer than the Gatwick Express and only costs £17.00 return where as the Gatwick Express is £16.90 single.
- For Heathrow you can get an adult single on the Piccadilly line for £4.50 or £6.90 if you take the Heathrow Connect from Paddington. On board the Heathrow Express you’ll be paying up to £17.50 for a single.
- The Stansted Express starts from £15 single, but if you take the Terravision bus it’s only £8 for a single.
- The TransPennine Express gets you to Manchester airport for as little as £12 return from all around the North, but if you’re only interested in going to Manchester city centre a single on the train is just £2.90.
- From the centre of Birmingham the National Express will take you to the airport for just £3.20 single or you can get the train for £3.
Visit Holiday Extras to make sure you don’t pay too much before you even get to the airport.
10. Get cashback on your holiday
If you find your holiday on high profile online search engines like Expedia, you can get paid to buy it through a cashback site.
On average, the payout will be roughly 2.5% of the price of the holiday, but some providers pay up to 10% cashback giving you a 10% discount on your holiday.
There are many sites to choose from. For booking a holiday, Rpoints has a large amount of relevant merchants. Click this link to buy your holiday through them and earn cashback.
11. Try alternative transport
Planes are not the only way to travel – taking the bus and the train can be cheaper.
Low prices offered by the Megabus has forced other bus companies, especially National Express, to offer competitive fares so you can now travel to lots of UK destinations in a really nice coach for just £1 single.
National Express also have a 2plus2 annual family pass for £16 a year. It allows two full paying adults to take two children for free. If it’s just you and your child they also do a 1plus1 deal on the same basis. National Express also own Eurolines which operate all over Europe and have fares to Ireland, Paris, Amsterdam and other destinations for just £15 single.
Click here to book a cheap bus trip.
Getting around in Europe is incredibly cheap by train. For booking in France and southern Europe the website that is recommended is Raileurope. You can also compare the price of flights and train journeys to the same destination on Momondo.com.
Click here to see if you can travel cheaply on the train.
12. Get cheap foreign currency
Commission free does not mean you get the best rate. You still need to look carefully at how much you are getting for your sterling. Rates at the airport are generally rubbish and on the high street, if you can find a better rate elsewhere, Travelex will refund you the difference. You can order currency from them online and then pick it up from any of their bureaux de change.
A good alternative to cash, that is safer than taking your own credit card, is a travel money card. These are prepaid cards designed especially for spending abroad. There are no charges for foreign transactions or for withdrawing cash abroad. The best card on the market is the Caxton FX global card which is completely free for all transactions except withdrawing cash in the UK, and can be used in any establishment where Mastercard is accepted. It also guarantees better exchange rates.
Click here to get a Caxton FX Global Mastercard completely free.
13. Get cheap roaming calls
The cost of using your mobile abroad is high, both for calling and receiving, but it’s still the most convenient way of communicating with those at home. There are two solutions:
An international sim card charges you nothing to receive calls and less to make them than your UK network. These are the main providers:
Alternatively, you can abandon your mobile and get a prepaid international phone card. You’ll get a lot more minutes for your money using a phonecard than your mobile, however you have to dial a local or free access number. This means you’ll have to find a public payphone and you often get fewer minutes than advertised when you use the freephone access number.
Click here to buy one of the huge selection of cheap phone cards at Planet Phone Cards. Or get one from the Post Office here.
14. Get out of the Eurozone
The pound is weak right now so to get the most from your money avoid countries that have the Euro, and also the US dollar if you can. Places like Turkey or Czech Republic are great tourist destinations and don’t have the Euro, plus the cost of living is generally much cheaper. So you don’t just get more currency for your sterling, but more for your money once you’ve exchanged it.
15. Grab family discounts
Loads of tour operators run offers that allow children to travel for free with a paying adult. If you’re booking online you should always look out for them. This applies for hotels and transport too. Here are just a few examples.
- First Choice let you take your first child for free
- Disneyland Paris is letting children under seven stay and play for free to celebrate their 15th anniversary
- Children under 15 go free on Legoland Windsor Holidays
16. Avoid the summer holidays abroad
We know that you can’t always avoid going away in your own summer holidays, but summer holidays in Europe are often staggered and may not fall at the same time as British summer holidays. Check with the local tourist office for the summer holiday dates and plan your holiday to fall outside of them.
This will help you save on accommodation, activities and even travel once you get there.
17. Get free guide books
Your local library will let you borrow a guide book completely free.
You can sort out extended loans on books if you are going to be away longer than the loan period, or just renew online.
If it’s recommendations you want there are tons of online travel guides you can look through before you go. Check out:
18. Get discount vouchers
Online voucher and promotional code sites are not the most reliable, but they do sometimes have functional codes that can get you money off your flights, hotel booking or even holiday package. The big names are:
Give us your tips
Do you have some great tips for getting a cheaper holiday? Tell everyone else in our forum.
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I am very glad to see these lovely and excellent detail. Wonderful posting !! This type post always helpful for us. Thanks!
Signing up for travel newsletters can save you a lot. Not only are you informed of all the short-lived promotions and last-minute deals, but you also often get exclusive vouchers just for being a subscriber.
Another good new voucher site I love is http://www.fabuloussavings.co.uk. There are a lot of travel voucher codes there to help you save.
Another home exchange website to consider is http://ww.1sthomeexchange.com
We have over 17,000 home exchange offers in 130 countries.
We also provide a free membership (for even more savings!) that allows you to list your home exchange offer.
And if you’re new to home exchanging, you’ll find several videos and articles to help you find, arrange, and enjoy a home exchange holiday.
I would say that rentals (houses or apartments) are also a great way to save money when traveling. For instance next week we go to Berlin and managed to get a 200 sqm flat with 3 bedrooms and all amenities for less than 100€ a night: no hotel can beat those prices!
Regarding “4. House exchanges are free”,
We’ve done numerous home exchanges to date. Home exchanging has allowed us to save on accommodation costs, car rental expenses, and restaurant meals… Other benefits include the friends that we’ve made. We’ve stayed in touch with most of the people we exchanged with. And have also visited with them years later.
Families with children also benefit from having a whole house rather than a single room for the duration for the holiday. We often swap with other families, which usually means our kids have new toys to play with during the holiday.
For anyone serious about trying this out, we strongly recommend that you join a reputable home exchange club. There are numerous clubs you can join, but one that has worked out really well for us is HomeForSwap.com.
Finding a home exchange may require some effort but we have always found that it’s been well worth it!
Regarding “18. Get discount vouchers”, I disagree that Online voucher and promotional code sites are not the most reliable. Indeed, one of the big names you featured, LatestDiscountVouchers.co.uk, is a VERY reliable source of valid codes and this is perhaps their best feature. All discount vouchers and codes are valid for use, with clearly set out expiry dates and terms of use.