5 Travel Hacks For Your Next Vacation
Travel hacks. What does that even mean anymore? Once you wade through all the Captain Obvious hacks from the Hotels.com commercials about “packing light” and “bringing an empty water bottle”, you’re left wondering whether there’s anything out there that’s actually useful.
Planning a cheap vacation is tough enough; here are four less than obvious hacks to help you out:
Get an upgrade by booking an economy ticket with a “Y” or “B” booking code
Phone in to the airline to request this code. This shows that you are looking for a complimentary upgrade if one becomes available. What does this mean? You pay for your economy ticket and if a complimentary upgrade is open, the airline will slot you in.
This tip works best if you are a frequent flier and are loyal to the airline carrier you booked your vacation with. However it's still worth a shot even if you are a new customer.
Demand dictates price so clean out those cookies
Dynamic pricing is a pricing strategy where merchants use highly flexible price ranges for services and then charge according to demand. If you go to your favourite airline’s website repeatedly and look for a cheap flight to your preferred destination and all of a sudden start seeing the fares increase it's probably because other people are trying to book the same vacation.
Travel booking sites and airlines do this by installing cookies on your computer so they can identify you as a repeat customer. You can avoid this by cleaning out your cookie internet history and/or using incognito window settings on your browser to sidestep the problem altogether.
Get travel insurance with trip interruption
When you’re jet-setting from country to country, nothing gets more predictable than the fact that everything is unpredictable. Planes break, hotels lose reservations, things are changing all the time.
Buying travel insurance before take-off can help pay for medical care if you have a crisis abroad as well as offset the costs of delayed flights or last minute hotel bookings if emergencies happen.
Be from a different country when booking discount fares
Often, where you are when you buy your flight can influence the price of the fare. These “point of sale” transactions can vary, thanks to something called regional pricing. For example, you’ll pay more for a Canadian-booked flight than an American one.
Buy your airfare from an American travel site/airline carrier and see if there’s a difference. Use Hola Internet as a VPN to fake an American IP address to be legit and shop cheap deals until you drop.
Get bumped from a flight and make a profit
Flights are often overbooked and more often than not, the airline will be scrambling to reshuffle people to other options. If you’re schedule is flexible and you don’t mind a wait, you can volunteer to be bumped to a different flight.
Know that you can negotiate the price when you get bumped, ask for cash and make sure any flight vouchers you received don’t have restrictive blackout dates and limiting stipulations. You’ll also want to make sure that the airline hasn’t booked as a standby customer on the next flight.