Did I win the lottery? Nope! A round-the-world trip can even be cheaper than living in Germany. Here are my tricks for flight searches:
1. Travel lightly!
If it’s possible do it like me: Travel only with your hand luggage. One really doesn’t need much for living. I am traveling only with hand luggage for months now. It works quite well. For a holiday, therefore, you shouldn’t need much more. The benefits of hand luggage are obvious:
- You save money for not checking in more luggage.
- Traveling is more comfortable and flexible.
- You are not dependent on expensive caps but you could even walk in the worst case.
- You can book cheaper stopover flights and exit at the first destination. Luggage which is checked in would fly onward to the actually booked destination.
- Since you don’t need to wait a long time for your luggage and you are very flexible you could maybe even get some open-jaw tickets.
2. Travel flexibly!
If you want to fly cheaply you should also be time-wise flexible. As a digital nomad I can, of course, decide on my own when and where I want to work. I don’t have to ask my boss for vacation first but can book hot deals right away. There are some websites and newsletters which inform you about cheap specials and hot deals. And there are also whole communities which are specialized on error fares of airlines and on finding good open-jaw tickets. Here, of course, you have to react quickly. The mentioned websites you will find on the Liberated.de links & tools list. Generally, I can assume that there is a good deal for a long-distance flight at least once per month. Maybe you will not get directly to your final destination but you might have to book an onward flight in your destination’s region. But if you are flexible you can save some money here. Generally, I can recommend to have a few stopovers of possible. So, you can not only get to know new locations but with a smart combination of cheap airlines you can travel a longer distance with less money. As a nomad, you will make quickly new friends around the world so that you know many people at many places of the world over time. So, you might even be able to use stopovers to visit friends. Some online flight search engines even suggest you cheap destinations in certain areas. If you are flexible regarding time and location you will always find outstanding deals. Since I love to get to know new places I have no problem by landing somewhere else than originally planned.
3. Travel foresightedly!
What? I thought travel flexibly!? No, that is not what I mean! Generally, you can save a lot of money with the flexibility described above. But generally, it is also beneficial to book soon. The times of last minute are already gone. Usually you get the cheapest tickets (depending on who you ask) about 10 weeks before departure. Of course, the prices can fluctuate a lot between certain seasons and holidays. And of course, weekends are often more expensive. The best thing is if you fly between Tuesday and Thursday. Whoever is willing to fly at crazy hours saves money, too. Whoever is even willing to book at crazy times saves even more money. Because many booking pages raise their prices when many people are visiting their website. And as a matter of fact, the most people are just surfing the web in the afternoon and evening.
4. Travel technologically!
We don’t live in the stone age anymore. Traveling has been revolutionized during the last years. Today you can plan and book everything which is necessary on the internet. Travel agencies are only good for buying whole holiday packages for your family. If you are flexible you can beat all travel discounters regarding the price. The best of many tools in the internet for flexible and cheap flight searches is according to my experience Kiwi.com. There you can use several functionalities to find the best flight combinations for yourself:
- Search in multiple start and destination locations
- Radius search for start and destination locations
- Search for multiple flights (for example open-jaw flights)
- Get destination suggestions
- Search in whole time periods
- Overview of cheapest flights
- World map with prices
- Guarantee: Alternative flights or refunds for cancellations, changes or delays
But before you decide to book you should first take a look on the website of the airline. Sometimes you find your flight a little bit cheaper there. Nevertheless, it is easier to book your flights over Kiwi.com and you get the guarantee. Because often the websites of the airlines are confusing, don’t work correctly or have bad payment methods. I also suggest to you to open the website before booking in the incognito modus of your browser (in Chrome for example by Ctrl+Shift+N). Because on some websites I’m suspicious that they track through cookies which flights you search for and then display their prices higher for you. Also, a VPN tunnel might help here to hide your IP address.
5. Travel entrepreneurially!
But the internet has even more advantages. Someone who thinks like an entrepreneur can easily find agencies to which he can outsource his search for flights. For every challenging job, there are professionals who can do it better than yourself. The good thing is that you only pay flight search experts if you save money. Payment for success, what does a nomadic online entrepreneur want more? But of course, if you only search for a Ryanair flight to Mallorca at a fixed date the flight expert might not be able to help you. But if you are somewhat flexible and have some longer flights they can tweak the price as no one of us normal people could do it – even if we would research for hours.
One last trick
Many countries don’t even let you inside if you don’t have an onward flight ticket to show. But if you want to stay flexible with you return then there exist some good services for you which rent you a 24 or 48-hour ticket. Then this flight is officially booked on your name but will be canceled by the service provider after your chosen rental time. This is, of course, much cheaper than buying a real return flight and then allow it to lapse.
Do you know some more tricks how you can travel the world cheaply? Then please write them below in the comment section. I would love to know your travelhackz!
Hey man. That's an awesome guide there buddy! Resteemed and followed. Looking forward to more travel tips from ya. Here's to you travelling with steem in the future ! Cheers. Do follow back, I hoping to write some interesting articles very soon. Been super busy lately have not written much. Enjoy wherever you are now!! Take care
I will definitely post some very interesting travel and life hackz during the next days ;-)
Love these tips! I've been doing these things for years, and it took me so long to figure it out! Thanks for spreading the wealth of knowledge.
Always happy to help
Lot of great tips! Never thought about hiring an expert to do the research for booking flights. I will try it next time. If it works, it will save me time and money!
It will save you not only money but a lot of time! They will only charge if they can help you
Great article, just followed you from the reggae post. I myself work for an airline and my tip on this subject would be to use a vpn to change your location. Some airlines depending on the location you are buying from change their prices!
Yeah, VPN is another good idea. But I've never tried it yet so I can't confirm anything :-)
Nice informative post. Keep up the good work!
I will definitely! Follow for more ;-)