Off-site parking in Los Angeles is not very “off”

I hate paying for parking anywhere and would hate to add up how much I’ve spent over the years leaving my car at airports. When you’re flying out for a week or two and it’s not convenient for someone to drop you off, you’ve either got to pay a taxi (if it’s from home) or to suck it up and pay to park. If you live far from the airport, or you’re in an area where it’s sometimes cheaper to go one city over, you’re really out of options.

Thankfully I don’t pay nearly as much as most other people do when this happens. Half or less most of the time.

See, I rarely park in the actual airport lot—even at economy one—because it’s usually dramatically less to leave my car in a private lot nearby. I’ve never paid more than $7.50 per day to park in Fort Lauderdale, for example, until recently when I had to park in the airport garage when running late for a flight. (Long story.) There it’s $15 per day. If you’re away for a week, that’s $105. In a major city, it can be even worse.

In Orlando a couple weeks ago, I paid $6 a night to leave my car in the lot of the Airport Marriott, where I caught an airport shuttle in a flash. That’s another advantage of these places: usually they have a more frequent shuttle schedule than the airport itself does. When I used to park off-site in Nashville (BNA), they would take you within 10 minutes even if nobody else needed a ride.

I usually use a site called Cheap Airport Parking because they’re on of my advertisers over at Perceptive Travel. Even if they weren’t they’re the second-largest consolidator of these off-site options, so it’s worth checking them out. Here are some sample rates available most days of the week.

MIA Embassy Suites – $5
LAX Premier Parking – $3.99
EWR (Newark) Premier Parking – $5.99
FLL (Ft. Lauderdale) Hilton – $6
TPA (Tampa) Memorial – $3.25
MCO (Orlando) – 3 parking lots are available under $3 per day.

They continuously ask customers to rate parking lots on 5 criteria: location, facility, wait times, shuttle experience and personnel attitude. Based on these ratings they calculate the overall quality score of a lot and sort parking lots based on this score to promote the best lots. Parking lots know about this algorithm and try to serve the customers better in order to be on top in the list and get more customers.

Off-site parking options at MIA I’ve used.

They don’t serve every market—nobody does—but you can usually Google “airport parking” or “off site parking” and the airport code/city to find the options if the market is not on the list of sites like this one. It doesn’t work everywhere, since some airports are too small or inconveniently placed, like the PIE one I have to use sometimes out of Clearwater/St. Pete, Florida.

Most of the small ones (not that one) have reasonably priced parking though. Where my father lives in Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina, the overnight charge is $4 and you can walk from the lot with your wheelie suitcase to the entrance.

My dentist in Mexico studied in the U.S., does great work, and is seldom in a hurry. He gets all the local gringo business and probably charges more as a result, yet what our family of three paid over the course of a year there was about 1/4 what it would have cost in a mid-sized U.S. city.

Afar magazine ran an infographic earlier this year in the print edition that showed approximate costs for different procedures in the USA vs. what it would cost you elsewhere. Almost anywhere in the world is cheaper than here for health care, of course, for a long list of reasons: high insurance/litigation, high doctor payments, a for-profit system, insurance company lobbyist power, and an upside-down system where it’s easier to get reimbursed for a problem than prevention.

Here are a few examples from their list though:

Fertility treatment: $15,000 USA, $4,400 Costa Rica

Hip replacement: $33,000 USA $12,500 in Mexico

Knee replacement: $34,000 USA, $16,500 Singapore (half again in Mexico, from what I’ve heard locally)

Coronary bypass: $88,000 USA, $21,000 Taiwan

Gastric bypass: $25,000 USA, $8,200 Malaysia

Spinal fusion: $41,000 USA, $9,500 India

Here’s a link to a great medical costs chart in the Washington Post showing what standard procedures like CT scans, MRIs, and C-section deliveries cost. A few zingers from that:

Having a baby the normal way: $9,280 here, $1,291 Argentina

C-section delivery: $14,374 here, $3,145 Spain

Hospital overnight stay: $3,949 here, $632 Germany

The only procedure on the chart where the U.S. was not the most expensive was for cataract surgery. Apparently Switzerland is more pricey for that.

Now back to dental work, which has a huge disparity and it’s something you spend money on regularly even if you’re in good health. A crown that will set you back $750 – $900 in the United States will cost 1/3 that in Hungary or Costa Rica—and get done faster. If you have seen the prices on Groupon for a dental check-up and cleaning at half price, half it again and that’s probably what you will pay in Mexico.

For even minor procedures, if you have a co-pay and a big deductible (or you’ve got nothing), getting it done overseas can save you serious money, even when you factor in travel costs.

One specific one to keep in mind if you’re departing on a long round-the-world trip: vaccinations. Some require a series of shots over time. A couple times when circling the globe I got the second or third one in Bangkok instead of locally. Sure, it was a bit of a hassle, but it cut the cost in half.

What have you had done abroad that has saved you a bundle?

My $62 (gulp) single room in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Even seasoned travelers sometimes end up in a travel destination that stumps them when it comes to costs. “I can’t believe how expensive this place is”—that’s a statement you’re not happy about uttering.

It’s a painful realization when you thought a place would, at worst, be on par with what things cost at home. Then you get there and start wondering where all your money is going.

It happened to me in the Atacama Desert region of Chile last year, I heard backpackers who came from Ecuador or Panama muttering about it in Cartagena, Colombia a few weeks ago. I’m sure lots of travelers are cursing in Brazil right now. Some are shocked when they find out how crazy expensive Australia has become, or how pricey Singapore is compared to the rest of Southeast Asia.

This is why a bit of pre-trip research is necessary. As I pointed out in the book Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune, most vacationers decide where they want to go and then try to fit that trip into their existing budget. That only works though if you know most of the costs up front, like on an organized tour, a cruise, or an all-inclusive vacation. Otherwise it’s backwards: the cost of the destination should match the budget you’ve got. Otherwise you’re scrimping and sweating over the restaurant tabs.

Keep one eye on (print or web) international news because these factors all play a part.

What makes a travel destination expensive?

1) The population is wealthy.
This is the main one. It’s not an exact correlation, but the higher the per capita GDP of a country, the higher prices are going to be. Think Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Denmark. When a country’s wealth rises quickly, as it has in Turkey, Thailand, and Brazil, prices are going to rise.

2) Taxes are high.

The price of gasoline in Germany – per liter in euros

The United States is a rather inexpensive place to travel compared to Europe, not because we’re less wealthy, but because taxes are much lower. (We get less from our government too, but that’s another story.) If citizens pay a high percentage of their income in taxes or more than 10% on everything they purchase, that affects the price of everything, from food to fuel to hotel rates.

3) Labor laws are inflexible.
This is another good/bad factor: if all workers make a good salary, prices for taxis, restaurants, and goods in stores are higher. If those workers can’t be fired without an act of God, that means a very inefficient labor system too, which adds costs at every step of the transaction chain.

4) Distribution systems are inefficient.
Another reason retail prices in the U.S. are cheaper than in many developing countries is that we have a very lean distribution system. In Japan or Mexico there may be six people taking their cut between manufacturer and consumer—and a monopoly or duopoly on top of that. In efficient countries there’s less waste in the system and fewer middlemen. There’s also healthy competition: five wireless carriers instead of one, ten grocery story chains instead of two. Five hundred beer brewers instead of one.

5) The currency is out of balance.
The reason Brazil and Chile are expensive for travelers (besides the reciprocal visa fees) is the strength of their currencies. Both countries have been on an economic tear the past few years and lots of outside investment money has poured in. As commodity prices rise, countries that put out lots of commodities from under the ground (such as these, Canada, oil countries) see their currency vault up in a hurry.

6) Supply and demand.
Basic economics still applies. If every room in a destination is sold out for three months straight, good luck finding a deal on a hotel. Thus despite Italy’s economic clusterf&%k, you’re not going to find any bargains in Florence.

7) Everyone is out to rip you off.
Every time I read something about traveling in French-speaking West Africa, this is the main complaint. If you could pay the real price, it may actually be cheap to travel around. Since every person you come in contact is trying to charge you double what a local would pay, however, it’s a daily struggle that drives up costs. No fun.

Want to figure out where your money will really stretch instead, in places that are cheaper than where you live now? Pick up a copy of The World’s Cheapest Destinations at Amazon, B&N, Apple’s iBookstore, or the link top right for my publisher.

This week Google announced that on July 1 it is shutting down the most popular RSS stream blog reader in the world, Google Reader. A whole bunch of you probably get to this blog from there.

I’m sure most people who signed up for the service assumed it would be around as long as Google would, close to forever. But the company is chopping anything that’s not a profit center, so your calendar and Gmail could be next if you rely on them daily.

Which brings us to an important question: do you have a backup plan for products or services you use regularly when you travel?

* What’s your second way of getting cash if your debit card is lost, stolen, or eaten by a machine?

* What second or third credit card will you use when your first one is lost, stolen, downgraded (by credit limit) or copied by a cyber thief and disabled?

* How will you keep in touch with the important people in your life if you lose your phone?

* What will you do if Facebook shuts down or starts charging? If there’s a Twitter outage that lasts for days?

* What if Skype goes down or Google shuts down Google Voice?

* What’s your secondary e-mail address when the first one gets shut off or hacked? Do you trust Google enough to rely on gmail?

* Where are you storing all those photos you’re taking in case you lose the laptop, tablet, or phone where they’re stored?

I can’t say I’m 100% prepared for every scenario, especially considering I almost never buy travel insurance. And if Paypal goes under, I’m in big trouble since that’s how most advertisers pay me.

But if you spend 10 bucks on Nomadic Matt’s book you’ll get ideas on what to do on the money side (with specific recommendations).

As for me, stay tuned next week if you read this blog’s RSS stream somewhere because I’m dropping Google’s Feedburner like a hot potato this weekend. It’s been a long time since I trusted that company anyway and based on how they’re treating customers, I don’t have much faith that Feedburner is reliable for the long term.

Yesterday I was sucked in by one of those slideshow stories SmarterTravel.com put out meant to make you click through a dozen pages so they can pump up their visitor numbers. Fine, lots of other media companies pull the same tricks, but it was the content that was so far off the mark. In a piece called “10 Places to Go While They’re Still Cheap,” the writer included Tasmania, Australia.

Australia?!

To get a visual sense of what this is so patently ridiculous, here’s a look at the exchange rate of the Aussie dollar to the U.S. dollar over the past decade. Apart from a little blip in there, it’s been a steep climb. It’s similar vs. the euro, plus the minimum wage is $17 an hour, so imagine what that does to the price of everything.

So for anyone coming from anywhere else in the world, Australia is one of the most expensive travel destinations in the world. It makes France look like a bargain. To get a confirmation on that, just ask someone who has been there in the past two years. Anyone.

Sydney and Melbourne are now rated as two of the five most expensive cities in the world, just behind wallet killers like Zurich and Tokyo. Sure, Hobarts is lower than those, but in the way that Nagoya is a tad less than Osaka.

I’m sure what happened is people sat around a table deciding who to put in based on news, page hits, and buzz. Australia is popular, so they put it in, actual prices be damned. I’ve seen the same thing happen over and over, from the biggest travel magazines to CNN to Sunday newspapers. In this case, by a once-independent travel content site now owned by TripAdvisor.

Sole bloggers may not have a team of fact checkers at their disposal, but a lot of them have authority. They know what they’re talking about, so you can trust what they say.

A person writing a blog on family travel is usually traveling regularly with a family. One writing about Spain each week is usually living in Spain.

If you really want to know where the cheapest places to travel are, the blog of a guy who has written four editions of a book on that subject might be a good place to start. I’ll tell you that from their list (here’s a one-page version), Nicaragua and Cambodia are truly “cheap,” while Turkey, Ukraine, Panama, and Sri Lanka can be a good value depending on the where and how. Korea and Croatia cost just a shade less than travel in much of the U.S. I live on the Gulf Coast of Florida — not a bargain.

If you land on a site and see lots of top-10 lists and slideshows with picks that make you scratch your head, beware. That article may have been written by an unpaid volunteer (Huffington Post), someone working for almost nothing at a content farm (Examiner.com), or an intern who has never left the USA. You probably could do better yourself.

Or you could just throw darts at a map and made up your own slideshow. Put a number next to it and watch the clicks roll in!