I do a lot of media interviews and write a lot of short travel articles for other publications on how to get good deals on travel. Many times the editor or person interviewing me is looking for insider, little-known advice they haven’t seen before. What they really really want is some secret travel tip that’s going to save a bundle.
Unfortunately, in this time when almost all the information out there is changing in real time and is available anywhere via a computer in our pocket. Finding “secret travel deals” has gotten as common as finding pots of gold at the end of rainbows. As a friend of mine once said, “There’s no such thing as a travel hack really; it’s just a tool that you didn’t discover until now.”
So yes, there are tools and tricks that savvy travelers use to spend less on their vacation, but they’re usually hiding in plain sight. The only tools or strategies that are really “secret” in any way are the ones that you’re paying for via a membership, such as Going.com (formerly the much clearer name Scott’s Cheap Flights). As a member, you are actually paying someone to constantly scour the internet and find temporary sales, mistake fares, and promotional deals on your behalf.
There’s another one called SecretFlyer.com that does the same thing, mostly looking for airline goofs that you have to buy in a hurry before the mistake gets fixed. If you pay to belong to a home swap service or pet-sitter/housesitter service, you will frequently have free accommodation.
Otherwise though, the fundamentals of getting a good travel deal have much more to do with open variables than they do with any new app or secret trick. Some tools save you time, but they won’t uncover secrets. As a classic TV show once said, “The truth is out there.” You just have to find it.
Travel Deals Mostly Come Down to Flexibility and Research
I’m planning to take my wife to Europe for two months soon. By being flexible on our dates and using some credits we had, we’re flying to Amsterdam for next to nothing and coming home from Madrid for a bit more than $500 each. We’re flying on Christmas Eve because that day was significantly cheaper than anything the week before or after.
I didn’t find these deals through the internet version of a secret handshake or through any special back door. There were no secret travel deals.
I just put in the time to do the research and made sure we were flexible on the departure and return. Then I bought train tickets in advance to move between countries, booked hotels with loyalty points from credit cards mostly, and used HomeExchange.com for 17 days in Budapest.
We once flew all the way to Fiji and back on airline miles and did the same to Argentina and back. I’ve stayed in more than 40 hotels using hotel points. But none of this was accomplished using any kind of paid service or secret membership. You could do the exact same things yourself by following advice that’s all over the web (including on this blog) and using public websites everyone has access to.
Sure, it takes a little effort, and most people are looking for the easy way out instead, but I figure if I spend two hours working out how to get somewhere for free that would have cost me $1,000 otherwise, that’s time well spent. It’s more than I earn per hour working. Since I’m flexible with my plans, I know I’ll succeed with finding a good deal more often than not.
Contrast that with someone who must go to Bora Bora, must travel certain days in the third week of March, and must stay at a specific resort on a specific beach. He will pay whatever the airlines and hotels are asking. He has no choice. He can mess with the margins a little, but he can’t fundamentally reduce what he’s going to pay. No app, website, or trick is going to be much help.
Dynamic Travel Pricing and Peak Demand
The reason flexibility and a willingness to buck what the crowd is doing will trump all is that otherwise the deck is stacked against you. Like a punter playing roulette in a U.S. casino, the longer you play the more destined you are to lose. The numbers are just not mathematically in your favor. The airlines have an army of people who breezed through advanced calculus figuring out how to change seat prices in real time to best ensure the chance of squeezing every possible dollar out of every seat.
The hotels roll out dynamic pricing daily and sometimes hourly to capitalize on a surge in demand or a convention announcement. Rental car companies do the same, always weighing their options against what competitors are charging in every market and how many cars are reserved already. Much of the repricing is done by algorithms on a remote server, with no human intervention. Trying to find an app that’s going to counteract this is like thinking you can be a successful day trader because you bought a second monitor for your laptop.
This dynamic pricing model has spread to museums and attractions as well. You always got a cheaper ski lift ticket on weekdays, but now this is true at zoos and amusement parks. Museums are making you pay more if you come in the afternoon rather than the morning. In a way this is good as it spreads out the crowds. It’s bad news if you are not flexible, however.
Hotwire and CheapCaribbean work for one reason: they offer empty rooms at a discount. Use those services in peak demand periods though and they’re close to worthless. Services like this used to be more prevalent, back when Priceline used to have the “name your own price” bidding model. Now that dynamic pricing has gotten so sophisticated though, the deals are out there everywhere in periods of low demand, including on big Expedia and the hotel sites themselves.
Tried and True Travel Deal Strategies
So forget trying to gain an edge through technology and forget the idea that a trick like booking a plane ticket on a Tuesday night after midnight is some secret trick that will save you a bundle.
Instead of hunting in vain for secret travel deals, do these things:
- Keep as many options open as possible, including the destination
- Research those options in depth, including looking at historic flight cost patterns & overall hotel costs
- Use a tool like Google Flights to quickly see what effect changing dates or airports will have
- Travel where the currency/demand deals are now, not where prices and exchange rates are at record highs against your currency. Go where your money is worth a lot.
- Travel outside of high season (or go where it’s not high season there at least)
- Travel away from the prime destinations (interior Mexico, rural France, Czech Republic outside Prague.)
- Get good at turning most of your spending into free airline tickets or hotel points
- If you have a home, join an exchange program to use it for free accommodation elsewhere. If you love pets, use that to become a housesitter.
- Assume any travel article with “insider tips” or “secrets” in the title is going to be a disappointment and reread this list instead
- Put away your phone and enjoy where you’ve just spent all this time, money, and effort to reach
