I often get asked how I find the best flight deals. It’s either that or the age old question how do you afford to travel so much? The thing is, I’m not always traveling on insane deals because I can’t but I give it my best effort to always find the best deal for my desired destination.
Having a full-time job means it can be difficult for me to pick up and leave without a moments notice. Plus, trying to manipulate my vacation days means it wouldn’t be ideal to book a trip from a Tuesday – Tuesday. That would mean using too many vacation days for one trip.
All that being said, I am still conscious about how much I am spending on flights, hotels or tours. After all, in order to go on as many trips as possible, I need to stretch my budget.
There’s a misconception that travel is expensive or out of reach. Travel is as affordable as you want to make it. There’s nothing wrong with spending a weekend in a small town near your home or doing a day trip. If you live in Europe you can go to some pretty amazing places in a short amount of time. If you live in North America, like me, you have to be a bit more creative.
Scouting the best destination
Because I’ve only traveled to 30 countries, the world is a pretty open place for me right now. Therefore I’m pretty flexible in my destinations and where I want to travel to which is key for finding good deals. I generally do searches based on how much vacation time I have.
Choosing what’s realistic and doable is the first key to success. The second, is researching all of those areas. To do that I use sites like:
All three of these sites let me search by regions which allows me to see where the cheapest city to fly into is. You can either search by flexible dates to really get a sense of the best deals or pick your exact dates if you’re set on a specific schedule.
Tracking flights
Once I have an idea of where I’ll be going, I put alerts on any website possible for price drops. This is the easiest and least labour intensive way to track flight prices. I find the best websites to do this with are:
With international trips, or trips taking place over a holiday I find the more in advance you book it, the better chance you have at getting a good deal.
Typically I’ll start looking no later than 90 days out for an international trip. Once you hit that 90 day mark the flight prices tend to really fluctuate, at least outside of that you can track it a little more and give yourself time to consider the options.
When tracking flights make sure you always have an Incognito window open for reference. This doesn’t always happen because websites know consumers are getting much more tech-savvy, but there is still the occasion when they track what you’ve been looking at and boost the price just because.
Taking the plunge
When it comes to actually booking a flight I typically never use the booking website I was looking at (unless it’s the actual airlines website). I book with a travel agent.
There are many reasons why I’ve done this in the past but more so because I’ve been burned by a booking site before. That, and because if there’s ever a problem or you have questions, it’s 10000000x easier to get in touch with a single person you booked with than an online company. Trust me.
The thing I like about Flight Centre is that they will match whatever price you are finding online. As long as you are looking at a legitimate website and in Canadian dollars, they will 100% be able to find what you are looking for.
Playing the points system
There are people who basically make this their side-gig and manage to travel the world this way. I definitely envy them, I’m not sure I have the patience to be doing stuff like that. However, we have started trying to utilize the points systems we belong to as much as possible recently.
The best way to do this is by owning a travel credit card. These are different depending on what country you live in so I won’t go into too much detail here. Do your research on how much you’d have to spend to actually get a flight and compare different cards.
Once you have a points card be sure to pay for EVERYTHING on your card, and I mean everything. Every little dollar counts towards a flight in the future. If you’re going to be spending that money anyway, you might as well get something extra for it. Just please, please, remember to pay off that card and only spend money you have!
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What a great informative post. I love to travel and am always looking for good deals. I’ll have to check out those sites you mentioned for finding the best airports to fly into.
Thanks! I hope they work well for you 🙂
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