Sometimes a holiday can be a carefully planned affair and sometimes if you let it, you can have a Spontaneous Travel Experience. Luckily for everyone, there is a travel deal out there no matter your preference!
As someone who usually has more time than money I often place a huge emphasis on finding the best deal that I can to make sure my dollar goes further. This can mean 10+ hour flights on super budget airlines, sleeping in hostel dorm rooms and often opting for the 3 stopovers over the direct flight. This kind of travel is definitely not for everyone! Sometimes when I travel with friends or family, I’ve found I can relax my frugal ways a bit and indulge in hotels, direct flights and full-service airlines but still find a great deal to help me save.
I’ve compiled below a full list of all the travel deal resources that I refer to no matter what type of trip I’m planning and there are a couple of luxury options in there as well! This list is part of The Ultimate Guide to Booking Affordable Travel On Your Own series and you should definitely couple these sites with my list of Top Travel Websites and Top Travel Apps to help when booking your next holiday.
Error Fares
First things first is an explanation on one of the most exciting things to happen in travel in recent years – the ability to widely share a magical fare called an Error Fare. What is an error fare exactly? Well, an error fare (aka mistake fare or glitch fare) is basically a pricing error that has occurred when issuing the ticket. It’s interesting to note that the error in pricing usually comes down to human error. Simply missing a zero on the end of a number can cause a pricey business class fare to cost as little as an economy one. For a more detailed explanation and booking advice, see my guide to error fares.
This is a great article from Secret Flying on What Causes An Error Fare for those that want to get into the details of how it works.
There are three golden rules when it comes to booking an error fare:
- Book it as soon as possible!
- Do NOT book anything else
- Do NOT contact the airline
An error fare can get shut down as quickly as an hour after being made public. Once the airline figures out that there is an unusually large amount of interest in their Washington to London flight in December and hang on, why is it being bought for only $200 RT??? They put a stop to our fun pretty quickly! Do not think about it too hard. If it kind of works then just book it.
Even though it’s not likely, some airlines have been known to not honour their error fares and will cancel your ticket. Don’t worry, they’ll always refund you your money. It is just very important that you do not book any accommodation or other flights until your ticket is issued.
Even more important: Do not contact the airline! You will ruin it for everyone else who is yet to book this juicy deal. In the past people have been known to call the airline to check if the deal was for real or to find out when tickets would be issued and this is the quickest way to make sure the deal is discovered.
Deal Aggregators
For those who are happy to let the deal come to them and plan their holidays around whatever flights tickle their fancy. You can get notified of specials through your favourite medium: Twitter, Facebook, emails and even set up app notifications for the truly obsessed. The best thing is that all of these services are completely free and you as the saying goes, it doesn’t cost anything to just take a look!
I’ve split my recommendations into three levels to make it easier for you to choose how involved you would like to be and how high your comfort level is booking your deals online.
Level 1 – The deals nicely packaged for you
These are usually my recommendation for people just starting out who might be used to booking holidays through travel agents or like packaged deals.
Travelzoo
Travelzoo was my first dip into the travel aggregator world. They are best known for their weekly “Top 20” compilation of travel deals which include flights, hotels and package deals. Sitting in my office dreaming about the places I wanted to go, I would drop everything when their Top 20 email came into my mailbox every Wednesday filled with so many possibilities.
Now that I’m more knowledgable about finding these deals for myself I might not regularly read my weekly Travelzoo newsletter but I still subscribe and will have a quick look if I’m in need of some inspiration. They’re also a great company to deal with. They are very quick to act if I’ve ever had any questions or needed to change anything.
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