Cheap Travel
Everyone is looking for cheap travel. Unless you are just made of money, then finding cheap places to travel or find ways to save money while traveling is important.
We travel an average of 100 or more days a year, sometimes more. Once in a while we take cruises, other times we find places to go in the United States and sometimes we go on guided tours or to resorts.
We also often do staycations since we live in Florida. It is not at all difficult living in Oldsmar to go to Clearwater, finding a hotel in Orlando or just hitting Miami or Fort Lauderdale.
We are opportunists and make the most of our travel dollar when we do go.
I will not only show you how to get travel on a budget but maybe you might be lucky enough to get some time for free at a resort or hotel. Just read until the end!
Cheap Travel Research
One thing we do is a ton of research. We have found that over time we get the best deals from a handful of vendors.
Once in a great while we might spend enough time to save a few dollars but we have found that the extra hours spent searching did not translate to good value. If we spend an extra four hours searching only to save $50, it is not a good value for us.
Cheap Travel Tip – I Love Booking Engines
Booking engines or aggregators pull information from multiple sites and give you results. Using tools like these you can find the best rates at any given time for whatever type of vacation or trip you want to find.
You don’t always have to look for cheap places to travel with a booking engine. Sometimes you find a location or flight that is simply looking to fill empty space at the last minute.
Which brings me to tip 2, what are my favorite booking engines.
Cheap Travel Tip for Airlines (and Hotels)- Cheap Air
I love Cheapair.com. This site lets you check on flights to where you want to go and it gathers prices from around the country and world. Furthermore, you can find last minute deals if you have a few dollars in the bank and want to take a spontaneous trip!
Spontaneous trips? Well yes, they have a tool that graphs out when the best time to buy flights might be as well as the times of year.
The beauty is that this site can also find you hotel deals and more. This website has not only been a money saver, its has been a time and hassle saver too. If you have ever spent time online hunting for a deal or hours pouring over prices that are within a few dollars of each other, you know what I am talking about.
Save yourself the headache and just go to Cheap Air if you want use the best site for cheap airline tickets.
Cheap Travel Tip for Tours- Tour Radar
Did I mention I love booking engines?
Tour Radar has an enormous list of tours on its site. You can go to Africa, India, China and one of my favorites, Costa Rica.
In fact, we took a trip to Costa Rica and booked with Costa Rica Monkey Tours.
We had an amazing 8 or 9 day experience and saw one of the most beautiful countries in the world. We got to experience nature, adventure, great people and of course the nightlife.
With Tour Radar you can save money every day but they often have HUGE TOUR DEALS if you are flexible with your schedule and have the finances to travel.
Remember a tour includes the lodging and the people necessary to take you around safely.
Tour Radar is easy to use. You will either click around at some of their deals or you can use the search feature. The search feature allows you to search by company or location where you can compare rates and deals that are going on!
Cheap Travel Tip for Cruises- Cruise Direct
With all of the travel that we do. Our how to travel cheap tip that we use the most often is using the cruise direct booking engine.
Cruise Direct is yet another booking engine, this time for cruises. It pulls all of the information that all the cruise lines offer and presents them to you by port, dates or cruise lines.
We happen to live in Tampa for Florida. That makes it quite easy for us to get the the Port of Tampa, Port Canaveral the the Port of Miami anytime we want.
We also have the ability to do these trips at the very last minute. So we look for last minute cruise deals all the time.
Using Cruise Directs booking engine gives us fantastic savings all year round and allows us the opportunity to pick up and leave without breaking the bank.
Just check out Cruise Directs last minute cruise deal here. Just taking a quick look I see some for less than $150 per person for 4 days! Not a bad deal if I may say so myself!
If you prefer to plan it out, just use their search function. You will save because you can compare your cruise deals!
Cheap Travel Tip-BookVIP Travel
I have written about my BOOKVIP reviews many times.
Here are just a few:
Why Travel? | Six Reasons to Travel That You Might Not Be Aware Of
Timeshare Promotions- Our Cancun Experience
Vacations Under $1000 For Couples
We have also stayed at other locations through BookVIP.
Let me tell you about the BookVIP company just so you understand.
They are a timeshare promotion company. They give you a tremendously cheap all inclusive resort stay in exchange for you and your partner going to a presentation.
The timeshare presentation will last about two hours and you get to pick the day usually. There is no obligation to buy the promo and there is MILD pressure applied. Nothing too harsh though.
During the presentation they give you free booze, free food and show you the property. After that, you basically listen for a few more minutes and have to say no two or three more times, if you are not interested. If you are, that is a different story.
I want to put this in perspective for you.
Would you expect to have a beautiful room on the beach, with multiple pools and would you expect to be waited on hand and foot for around $80 a day?
Let’s imagine you said yes to my question. Would you also expect to have all you can eat food and all you can drink alcohol at that same location?
We got exactly that. We received a stay at a 5 star resort for around $800 total. Not per person, total!
We stayed in a gorgeous room, we ate as much was we wanted from a number of different restaurants. The bartenders kept pouring drinks. We had access to pools, shows, night clubs and the beach, all for $800.
The retail value of the stay for those five days would have been close to $3000. All we had to do is spend 2 hours listening to a sales pitch, which we declined, and we were immediately back to fun in the sun.
Take a look at some of the Cancun BookVIP promos they have going on to see what I mean. Then price them yourself through a 3rd party, you will see what I mean.
Cheap Travel Tip- Win a Free Hotel or Resort Stay
How to travel for free? Cheap travel does not get much cheaper than free.
I am working through BOOKVIP and as a result I am giving winners a chance to stay in either Mexico, Orlando or Las Vegas! All you have to do is sign up for our email list AND join our Facebook page.
I will pull the winners from the email list and then announce them on Facebook.
The Hotel and Resort stay is free but you are responsible for getting there, the resort fees and the taxes. That’s it!
As an added bonus, by being part of our list, you get alerted to all of your cool new content, great time sensitive travel deals and much more.
What are you waiting for! Join Our Facebook page NOW and Sign up for our list!
