Welcome travellers! Saving up while travelling can be quite hard, as the plane tickets, accommodation prices, costs to visit attractions, and trying the local cuisine can be quite heavy on the bank. Still, it is quite possible to decrease these costs. In this post, I am going to share what I have learned while travelling to 9 countries in the last year.
Optimizing Plane Ticket Costs
First, let’s take a look at some tricks we can use to optimize the plane ticket costs.
If you have already decided on the place you want to go, the points below will help reduce the costs. If you haven’t decided yet, I would recommend using Kiwi.com, where you can pick the departure location and set the target location to “anywhere” and the dates to “anytime.” Then, you can sort by prices. This will allow you to see the cheapest options to fly nearby. After you decide where you want to fly, you can try out the items below for saving up.
Clear Cookies in your browser or use incognito mode
When you search for a flight multiple times you will notice the price will go up almost each time. Once you decide to buy make sure to delete the cookies or use incognito mode.
Book in Advance, but Stay Flexible
Booking in advance usually helps, but sometimes plane ticket prices drop the day before, so always make sure to check before purchasing. The pricing usually depends on how booked the flight is, so if there is only a day to the flight and the flight is not fully booked, the price will go down. So make sure to check every day if you are indecisive and flexible on time, you can find good deals on some days.
Avoid Unnecessary Cabin Luggage
Unless you plan to stay in the country you are flying to for a long time, you may not need to take the checked baggage option, meaning the baggage is checked in when you check in for your flight and sent to the plane luggage section. Airlines will increase the prices dramatically once you add checked baggage. In fact, as the weight increases, your total price will almost double. I noticed I had been taking along unnecessary stuff that I never even used during my trip. A small suitcase to take on the plane will save you so much. You can usually take a backpack, a small suitcase, and a handbag. So, I would recommend filtering out the items you are sure you will use.
With these tips, you can decrease your flight costs to a minimum.
Saving Up on Accommodation
There are a few popular websites when it comes to finding accommodation. I mainly use Booking.com and Airbnb. If you are looking to stay in hostels or hotels, Booking.com is my go-to. If I want to rent out an apartment, I go with Airbnb. You can also find apartment deals on Booking.com as well but make sure to search for the same apartment in Airbnb as well to compare the prices.
If you want the cheapest option for accommodation, go with hostels. But in this case, you will be staying in the same room with multiple people and using a shared bathroom most of the time. If you want to have privacy, you can go with hotels. If the hotel has affordable breakfast and dinner options, you can also upgrade your package for that. But make sure to research how much you would pay for food by checking the menu prices in the nearby restaurants. If you calculate that the total price will be lower if you eat in the restaurants nearby you do not need to upgrade your hotel stay to include additional meals.
Also, when you pick accommodations close to the city center, the prices usually go up. You can find a location a little further from the center that is close to public transportation and easily get to the center by taking a metro or a bus.
Additionally, on Booking.com, you will get deals the more you book through the website. For example, I’ve had discounts and even free taxi service that literally picked me up from the airport and brought me to the door of my accommodation.
Saving Up on Food
Eating out all the time can become quite expensive. When you book a hotel, there is no kitchen most of the time, so you have to go out and eat. To cut the costs in this case, I would eat out once a day to try the traditional cuisine and other times get cheese, bread, and olives from the supermarket to make sandwiches and store them in the fridge.
Especially if you intend to stay longer, eating out all the time becomes a little unhealthy, so I later started to get studio apartments with a kitchen and buy supplies from the supermarket to cook. I would only eat out at places that are really popular and serve local cuisine, and then cook the rest of my meals.
Saving Up on Activities
My initial go-to activities when I visit a new place are seeing museums, exhibitions, and popular attractions. Usually, there are museum or exhibition cards that will let you have discounts when entering for most cities. It varies for different locations but make sure to just check the availability of museum cards, or sometimes called city cards.
Also, if you are a student or a senior, museums usually have discounts, so bring your student card with you at all times. There are even days during the week when some museums are free. For instance, when I was in Poland, every day some museum was free. See Warsaw’s Museum’s for Free in this li
There are also many free social events on Meetup.com. The social language exchange events are my favorite, as you get to meet locals and people from all around the world, while also getting the chance to practice different languages.
Saving Up on Transportation
If you want to use taxis, please download an app like Bolt or whichever app is popular in the current city. These apps will ensure fair pricing, and if something goes wrong during the ride, you can always contact someone through the app later. On the other hand, if you take a taxi without an app, the drivers might try to scam you, giving you a much higher price than it actually costs.
Lately, I’ve preferred public transportation more, especially if it is well-organized in the city. For example, in Vienna, public transportation prices were 10 times more affordable than taxis, and the vehicles were clean, frequent, and not crowded. However, in Istanbul, there is a lot of traffic, and it’s hard to find a place to sit in public transportation since the buses are usually too crowded.
Final Thoughts
I hope these tips help cut down the costs of your trip, dear travellers! Please let me know in the comments your experiences and questions!