Buying International Plane Tickets and Booking Accommodation
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Airplane Tickets
Buy them on a Tuesday before 12pm EST, on a freshly restarted PC with your Google cookies wiped, a credit card that expires in no less than 2 years, in your pajamas, facing north. Just kidding.
I’m going to make this easy on you: There is no magic trick or gimmick for these things. There is a lot of information floating around about when to buy airline tickets. Some true, some false. For example, I've read that airlines put tickets on sale Monday evening, therefore you should buy tickets on Tuesday. At least for international tickets, I've never seen that happen. I have noticed that flying on a Tuesday or Wednesday seems to be the cheapest, but that’s not the same thing and not always consistent. A lot depends on timing, such as season and fuel prices, but it seems most is unpredictable and seemingly random. Then again, if it was predictable, I probably wouldn’t have been googling this subject myself once upon time, now would I?
Don’t despair, however, there are plenty of things you can do to find the best options out there, just keep in mind that “best” is relative. And, just as there is more than one way to frost a cake, what follows is one method of many for hunting down that cheap(ish) ticket. (If you want to know how crazy I can get about plane tickets, read this overly long blog post.)
First, some obvious things to keep in mind:
Flying off season will usually yield cheaper results, sometimes significantly. But not always! It never hurts to check.
Off season may vary depending on location. For example, traveling during the summer to Europe is going to be peak season, but that doesn’t mean Jun-Aug is the busiest the whole world round.
The more flexible you are with your dates, the more likely you will be to find a cheaper ticket. Same goes with flexible departure/arrival airports. The only problem is, you can end up spending hours upon hours searching date and location possibilities. But hey, you’ll know you found the best combo!
Watch out for overnight layovers. You might find cheaper flights that way, but in my experience I’d rather pay the few bucks more to avoid it. Anyway, if you keep looking, you can usually find the same or similar flight price without overnight layovers.
Booking through third parties (i.e. Expedia rather than Delta) may yield cheaper results, but if you run into any problems, they have been known to be extremely unhelpful. (I also have never been able to do the 24 hour check-in online when I bought a ticket through a third party. I checked-in at the airport the day of and everything was fine, but still. Being told there was an error or your ticket can’t be found is not reassuring.) In fact, recently third parties are about the same price, if not more expensive, anyway.
Now that we’ve got those reminders down, here’s how I go about finding tickets:
About 4 months before your desired departure choose a site like Kayak.com where you can look at multiple prices at once (choose the +/- 3 days for both the departure and return dates, so you can see a whole week’s worth of prices around both dates). Make a note of the dates and prices that work best for you, then check back about once a week to see how the prices are rising or dropping. Kayak, among many other sites, allow you to create free notifications of certain travel dates. You’ll get an email if the prices drop, go up, or even if they’re holding steady. I would never trust completely to these notifications and still check manually, but they’re a helpful tool.
At 2-3 months before desired departure you should have a good idea of what the prices for your dates are doing, and what airlines are cheapest. Chances are the prices haven’t moved significantly, but if they have, especially up, don't worry. There's a good chance they'll drop again, just keep checking back. When you feel ready to buy (I think 2 months* before is a good balance), go ahead and check Kayak again and then go to the website of the airline with the best deal. If everything looks good, buy!
*It is possible to buy tickets sometimes even up to a week before departure with decent prices, but I bet you they were cheaper two months ago. It also makes me very nervous to wait that long, knowing the prices can go up very high.
Tada! There you have it. Nothing magical. But with this method I always feel confidant I got the best prices.
Other helpful hints:
As of circa January 2018, the lowest fares between Europe and North America no longer include the first checked bag. The first checked bag is $50 each way, or you can pay a more expensive fare, such as $80 more total, and get the first bag free along with several other perks, like choosing your seat and being able to change your ticket. Not cool, you guys. Not cool.
azair.eu is a helpful site for flights within Europe or Asia, with lots of filters so you can hone in on what you’re looking for.
I advise against using the app “Hopper.” I added several of my upcoming flights over a period of time so it could keep track of them, letting me know the best time to buy. However, in all the flights and different locations and dates I added, I could find a much cheaper plane ticket myself every single time they notified me of the “best price", go ahead and buy. So, if you still like the app, just keep in mind you’re probably not actually getting the best price.
CheapFareGuru.com used to be one of my go to sites. They were always the cheapest by a good bit. Their site is a bit sketchy looking, but I’ve bought tickets through them a couple times and never had problems (other than not being able to check-in online). I say “used to” because their flights don’t load for me anymore. I dunno.
Accommodation
As for hotels and airbnbs, all the cute and affordable ones book up quickly, so I would start looking at least 4 months in advance, especially for popular tourist destinations such as Rome, Paris, London, ya know, all the places you want to go.
Hotels vs. airbnb? Totally depends on what you’re looking for. I think booking an airbnb is much simpler, but I don’t think it’s always cheaper. Hotels need to stay in business and thus prices seem to have become more competent, so I would recommend looking at some hotel sites and compare them with airbnb before making a final decision.
A tip for lodging, especially if you are staying in an airbnb type place, before moving or touching anything, take pictures of the whole apartment. That way, if your host decides to blame a broken outlet (or worse) on you after you've gone, you have proof to show them and the third party (such as airbnb) that that is how it was when you arrived.
Do you have any tips or tricks for finding good plane tickets and accommodation? I’d love to hear them, share in the comments below!
