6 Rookie Travel Mistakes That Will Cost You Money

Are you handicapping your budget when you travel by making rookie travel mistakes?

Are you costing yourself lots of money or creating extra hassles on travel days by making newbie errors that are easily avoided?

I once published an evergreen tips book called Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune: The Contrarian Traveler’s Guide to Getting More for Less. (Still in print on Amazon.) The point of it was to show infrequent travelers what frequent travelers do regularly in order to travel more often. It’s full of advice on what to do, but just as often what not to do.

Here are a few wrong moves I still see happening over and over again—and what to do instead.

Assuming Your Phone Plan Will Work Abroad

If you have a phone plan in the USA or Canada, there’s a good chance that plan goes into extortion mode when you head abroad. I have T-Mobile and I can text and use (rather slow) data abroad, but it’s going to cost me money to call if I’m not on Wi-Fi and I’ve landed in a few countries where T-Mobile didn’t have a local roaming partner, like Fiji and Nepal. 

For all other North American carriers, as well as many from other nations, you’re going to want a local SIM card. This used to be a physical card you had to open up your phone to insert, but the industry has mostly moved to eSim cards now, which are much easier to install, manage, and top off with more data. 

This can save you a large amount of money and let you keep posting those social media pics with a strong data connection. AT&T and Verizon may charge you $5 per day while you’re touring around London or Scotland. If you buy an eSIM UK card instead, however, 3 GB is just $8.99 and 5 GB is $12.99, both good for up to 30 days. Even if you have T-Mobile, this will give you a faster connection when you need it, like when you’re trying to navigate a GPS map in real time. 

Smart move: Unless you have T-Mobile, check into eSim options for the country where you’re going and figure out how it works before you take off. If it requires an app, you’ll want to install that from home. 

Doing No Research Before Leaving

I once met with some Bahamas Tourism officials and they were moaning about how often tourists fly into the wrong airport or take a boat to the wrong island. These vacationers didn’t even bother to look at a map when making their plans.

People have actually gotten worse about this rather than better in the smartphone age. When everyone bought a guidebook for their trip, they tended to at least flip through it a bit when figuring out their itinerary. If they needed recommendations, they asked other travelers who knew the place well.

Today they just post a few newbie questions on social media and figure Google will work the rest out for them after arrival.

This can result in a lot of unnecessary expenditures, especially on transportation. Sure, it’s great to just wing it sometimes, but if you don’t even know which end of a 100-mile island you’re staying on, you could be facing a lot of costly delays. If you have no idea what kind of deals are available and where the locals go out to eat, you could be overspending on almost everything you do. Many day tours need to be booked at least 24 hours ahead or you miss out. 

As Rick Steves says,

I may be biased, but an up-to-date guidebook is a $20 tool for a $4,000 experience — and justifies its expense on the first ride to your hotel from the airport. A guidebook can head off both costly mistakes (getting fined for not validating your train ticket) and simple faux pas (ordering cappuccino with your pasta in Italy). 

I tend to agree with him and if I’m going somewhere for more than a few days, covering a lot of ground, I get way more out of my trip if I buy a guidebook. Like last year when I spent two months in Greece and had a much richer experience because I wasn’t just winging it. 

Otherwise, I at least spend a lot of time digging up quality articles from reputable bloggers or writers who know what they’re talking about. 

That means I never rely on AI since their info is wrong more than it’s right and is more likely to be out of date since it can’t judge what’s current or not. I also avoid content farm websites like Forbes and CultureTrip that are cranking out hundreds of dubious articles every week. I mostly avoid TripAdvisor and Reddit, even though Google loves both these days, because many of the people who comment on these user-generated-content sites only travel once a year and they only post if they have something to complain about or rave about. There’s not much in between.

The best bet for internet-only advice is to find a blog that specializes in the region you’re heading to. Their advice will often save you lots of money and help you avoid hassles. 

Smart move: Guidebooks are still the most authoritative source with good maps. They’re a great value. But if you want to do everything online, find in-depth articles, read them, bookmark them.

Only Checking the Big Booking Sites for Flight Options

It’s a common misconception that if you search Expedia, Priceline, or Kayak, you’ll find all the flights available for a given route. They’ll show you the best price.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

First of all, they don’t usually show all the multi-airline options available and it’s quite hit-and-miss. Often I’ll find flights on one booking site that don’t show up on another—for $100 or more cheaper. If I use Skyscanner or Google Flights I’ll find alternate airport options that didn’t show up anywhere else.

Then you have the issue that many budget airlines—and Southwest—don’t share their information. So if you want to check Southwest, for example, you’ll need to visit their website individually instead of trying to find them on Expedia.

In Europe and Asia it can get even more complicated since there are more budget airlines and you haven’t heard of most of them. The best deal might be on RyanAir or WizzAir and those may show up in your search, but as I write this, RyanAir has been negotiating with Expedia for years and hasn’t shown up. For years, IcelandAir wasn’t on there either. 

There are a slew of smaller airlines that probably won’t show up when you do a search, like Jet2 and many regional or charter airlines. After all, there are at least six domestic airlines in Thailand alone and often the upstarts don’t want to kick back their meager profits to an online travel agency. 

Last, if you book directly with an airline, you may pass less and earn more loyalty points if you’re a member of their frequent flier program, plus they’ll have your passport number and TSA Pre-check info already. If you run into a problem with your flight, do you want to be dealing directly with the airline to get it fixed or do you want to deal with a middleman company?

Smart move: Figure out who flies to where you’re headed (try the tourism or airport website) and poke around. Use Skyscanner or Kayak for most airlines, then individual sites to fill in the holes. Unless you’re going to save a lot by using an aggregator, you’re usually better off booking direct with the airline. 

Exchanging Money Before Your Trip

If you want to lose money before you even take off for your international journey, go change some money at your local bank or departure airport. This is one of the most common rookie travel mistakes of all.

I’m mostly speaking to Americans and Canadians here, because if you live in Europe or a developing country where people routinely buy euros or dollars, you’ll find lots of exchange booths with decent rates. Even there though, you’ll get a much less advantageous rate than you would if you just waited until you arrived at your destination.

My in-laws used to do this all the time. They would go to their bank before leaving and exchange hundreds of dollars, getting an awful rate that set them back upon arrival. When they came to visit us in Korea when I was living there, they got 900 to the dollar (after fees) at home instead of the 1,150 they would have locally.

It’s not always that bad, but sometimes it’s worse. I have seen U.S. airports selling Mexican pesos at 14 to the dollar when the real rate was more than 19. Even within Mexico, it’s not unusual to lose 10% more on a cash transaction compared to what you would get from an ATM. The gap is even wider if you have a card that reimburses the local charges.

In a lot of cheap countries, keeping $10 more from that $300 you either changed in person or took out of an ATM would be enough to buy lunch for two or five kilos of fruit and vegetables. Or a bucket of beers! There’s one exception though: bring cash to Argentina. 

Smart move: Unless you’re exchanging currency with a friend or relative, wait until you arrive at your destination. Use an ATM card (preferably one with low or no fees) and take out cash as needed. Use a no-foreign-exchange credit card for large purchases. Bring some newish Andrew Jacksons along as backup: they’re worth something almost anywhere in the world.

Choosing a Destination First, Then Looking at the Budget 

Can you afford a week-long trip to Switzerland in the summer? You should really be able to answer that question before… you commit to a week-long vacation in Switzerland in the summer.

Can you really afford a girls’ getaway in Dubai, or a honeymoon in the Maldives?

I see chatter exposing this problem constantly. Even though many families and couples only take one big vacation a year, they act like the first place they think of is where they need to go, instead of actually figuring out where they can go based on their budget.

If you travel to The World’s Cheapest Destinations, you can backpack on $50 a day or be loving life on $150 a day as a vacationing couple. Try to do either in Norway, however, and you’d better be camping, hitchhiking, and turning into a tea-totaler.

Even next-door neighbors on the map can have radically different prices. Hungary is a bargain; Austria is not. Guatemala is a terrific value; Belize is not.

Even within a country, prices can vary a lot from place to place. Los Cabos is expensive and Tulum is stupid expensive, but many other coastal destinations can be a great deal. Then if you head into the Spanish Colonial cities in the center where the locals far outnumber visitors, nearly everything will cost less than it does at the beach.

Is there really only one place you two want to go or have to visit for some reason? Is there a destination offering a similar experience that is half the price instead?

Smart move: Take an honest look at what you have to spend and evaluate the alternatives—including the cost to get there. Check Google Flights with the map function and leave the destination open to find bargain flights. Pick up The World’s Cheapest Destinations to see entire countries that are a great value.

Passing up Free Travel From Credit Cards

Among all the rookie travel mistakes I see people making, this is the one that baffles me the most. The majority of middle-class people who moan about not having enough money to go on vacation could solve all that by taking one step: changing which credit cards they use. Instead of using a card that gives nothing back (a surprisingly large number of people do this) or one that just rebates a little cash, leverage one or more cards to get free travel.

For small business owners who can pay expenses with a card, they could pay for a vacation every year just from points and miles. No need to reach into the wallet except for food and fun. The flights and lodging would be covered already by using an airline card and a hotel card. Or one like Chase Sapphire where the points can be used for either.

Most middle-class people who moan about not having enough money to go on vacation could solve all that by changing which credit cards they use. If you’ve got bad credit or are over your head in debt, this tip won’t help, but for others it’s huge. If you’re not getting travel rewards back for most of your non-travel spending, then let’s just admit that travel is not very important to you.

Here’s what I mean. A typical sign-up bonus for an airline-affiliated credit card is 30,00 to 50,000 miles. Sometimes it goes higher. Right now, Delta is giving 40,000 miles for their Amex card after the minimum $2K spend. See more here. This American Airlines card will get you 60,000 miles upon sign-up. 

With even the lowest bonus amount and a few months of spending, you’ve got more than enough for a domestic round-trip ticket and probably enough for a ticket to Mexico or Central America from the USA. To give you an idea of the range, the past two years I booked a round-trip flight to Argentina for 60K miles, a one-way from my home airport in Mexico to Amsterdam for 40K, a flight from the USA to Mexico for 8K on an AA promotional deal, and four different Southwest one-way flights from between 6K and 11K.

If you and your significant other both do this with your credit cards, boom! Transportation covered for your next vacation.

Keep putting all your regular spending on there (that you were going to do anyway) and eventually you’ll earn enough to do it again. Some other cards like American Express and Chase Sapphire let you earn points for multiple programs. As I write this, Amex is giving 40,000 miles on their green card that you can transfer to Southwest, Delta, and others. (The airline ones give you other perks though, like removing the checked bag fees.)

Now, get a hotel credit card next when you see a fat sign-up bonus. The bonus alone will typically be enough for two or three nights’ lodging. I got the Wyndham one a few years back and got six nights free out of just the bonus.

Have your traveling companion do the same. Boom—you’ve just covered your lodging on that vacation where you already had airfare covered. Stay at an Embassy Suites with the Hilton credit card sign-up bonus (currently 70,000 to 130,000 for signing up) and toast me with your free drink at happy hour.

Some of the hotel cards give you elite status too, which may put you in a better room than you booked when staying with that chain. The IHG card even gives you one free room night at any of their properties upon renewal. I once paid the annual fee and then got a $349 Intercontinental room in pricey D.C. out of it two months later.

In subsequent years I stayed in a Crowne Plaza twice and an Intercontinental in Buenos Aires. It was “No charges Mr. Leffel” when I checked out of my upgraded suite.

Smart move: Trade your do-nothing credit cards for ones that earn free travel. Grab what’s there for the taking by choosing the right credit cards. Plan ahead, do some research, and use the points/miles currency to pay for your next getaway.

By avoiding these rookie travel mistakes and making smart choices instead, you can travel a lot more on the amount of money you have and probably enjoy it more as a result. Have a great vacation!