Travel with Zero Dollars (10): Six tips on saving money while traveling

Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 11:02 am

Wait till the end:

Do you know that hotels usually have left over rooms at the last minute? The moment those rooms go on sale, make sure you are the first one to get a booking there and you will find one of the best rates.

Your travel agent is taking a very huge commission:

There are many ways to find out if the travel deal is paying a lot of money to the middle man. All you have to do is compare your given rates to the ones presented on the Internet. If you see a huge difference then you should fire your agent!

The Internet isn’t always the cheapest place to buy travel:

On the other side of the coin, some travel agents might have access to special deals that are not published on the Internet. Sometimes, the affiliate commissions on the Internet could be very big as well. As a matter of fact, you can find some rather good deals in your local newspaper as well. You can even look for someone who owns a timeshare and get them to book a room for you for a fee.

Two roundtrip airline tickets are sometimes cheaper than one:

Airlines use sophisticated computer algorithms to price their tickets. It tries to predict demand for tickets and sets the price based on the data. However, it doesn’t always work properly. A one-way ticket can cost more than a round-trip ticket because the system thinks you’re a big-spending business traveler, and charges more. The solution may seem weird – buy two sets of advance-purchase roundtrip tickets, but to use only half of each — a process called “back-to-back” ticketing. The trick works best with a short trip where you aren’t staying over a Saturday night (the system thinks you’re a big-spending business traveler if you don’t stay over a Saturday night, too). Airlines frown on passengers who use this clever strategy, but they are actually quite legal.

Don’t spend money on car rental insurance:

Don’t worry too much about car insurance. You can rent with a credit card – Visa, for example, will cover you for most car rentals and you have to read the fine print carefully.

Get better rates on your hotel rooms:
Did you know that you can save money and still get a better room; all you need to do is to buy directly from the hotel’s Web site. It typically treats its direct-booking customers better than outsiders. Hotels will deny they do this when they’re on the record. But off the record, you can still get away with it.