Disclaimer: This post might (very likely will) make you want to pack your bags and get on a plane. If you have lots of deadlines from university or if you already used all of your annual leave from work, good luck! You have been warned ;)
I'm sure that like me, most of you see sometimes on the internet videos or pictures of amazing places with breathtaking scenarios or just somewhere you have always dreamed of visiting but couldn't because of money. - I've been there so many times (seriously, I've already lost count of how many times I planned my holidays to the Maldives in my head before getting pushed back to reality). - And although money is still very much needed when you are at your dream destination, usually the plane tickets are the most expensive thing, specially for long-distance flights.
Well, usually when I'm looking for tickets abroad I use skyscanner (https://www.skyscanner.com/) which is basically a website that filters fares from all kind of other sites (airline companies, travel agencies, etc) to find the cheapest prices for the dates you are looking for. I like it because instead of going through 30 different sites (like you would do if you just googled "cheap tickets amsterdam - maldives"), you find all the options there and you even have an option to search the for the cheapest fares during the whole month (if you don't have specific dates) or all months (if the month you go on holidays is not decided yet). You can also search from your closest airport or country using simply another country as the destination (so if you search for "canada" as the destination, you would get the cheapest fares to all the airports in canada from your departure place) or even the "everywhere"option (where you get a list of fares to different cities and countries).
Skyscanner is always helpful to me, but a couple of days ago I found a website that is like the cheap-ticket-paradise (specially if you don't have very specific dates). The website is called "Fly4free" (http://www.fly4free.com/) and it is amazing! It works like this:
- When you first open their page, you will see offers from everywhere. You can continue like this or you can choose offers departing from: Europe, Asia, USA or Australia.
- When you select your departing preference (from those 4), you will start seeing the deals, starting with the latest published ones. For example, if you select Europe, you will see offers within Europe, or departing from Europe but going to other continents too. Just like this:
(This screenshot was taken from their website and is only here for illustration)
When you click on the offer you are interested in, you will go to a page with all the information about it like the airline company, the dates for those prices, from which site you have to book the tickets, some general information about the country and a map showing the route. They also add a screenshot of the reservation so the users can see what it will look like and also some information about cheap accommodation in the destination.
That is it. This simple! Sometimes they have round the world tickets for a discounted price, special deals on accommodation on nice hotels, even cruise packages and most importantly... error fares! YES, ERROR FARES lol For those that don't know what error fares are, they are basically fares for a incredibly cheap price, which were usually errors made by airlines and for those you have to be very fast because they are usually rectified pretty quickly.
Let me just point out that they don't sell any packages or tickets themselves, they only post the offers for everyone :)
I came across this site by accident and no one that I know has ever heard of it so I thought it would be nice to spread the world. After all, it is not everyday we find incredibly cheap tickets around the world.
I hope this post was helpful or at least gave you all some inspiration for your next holiday! Did you find somewhere you liked? Are you planning a new trip? I'd love to hear about it! And if you have any questions, let me know! I love to pretend-plan holidays on my free time so I might be able to answer them.