How to Save Money On Your Travel Bookings

February 11, 2016

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about ways to reduce “fixed” expenses to free up money for goals like paying down debt or saving for a home purchase or retirement. But of course, it’s generally easier to reduce discretionary expenses that we have more control over like eating out and travel. The challenge is doing that without feeling like we’re depriving ourselves.

When it comes to travel, one of the best ways to save money is to book at the right time. The problem is that knowing the right time can be as difficult as timing the stock market. Here are some methods I’ve recently discovered that can help:

Flights: You can pay considerably different prices for the same flight and seat depending on when you buy your ticket and earlier isn’t always better. There are some rules of thumb like purchasing tickets 30 days to 3 months before your flight and specifically on a Tuesday at 3 pm ET (when airlines release the most sales). However, these guidelines aren’t always reliable. One possible solution is to use an app like Hopper, which tries to predict the best time to book your flight.

Another is to shop for flights on Southwest and on a site called Yapta. Southwest allows you to change your flight with no fee so you can always switch if you see a better deal. Yapta, which stands for Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant is powered by Kayak (the sites even look the same) but adds a feature that makes it live up to its name. It can automatically alert you if the price of your flight drops more than the exchange fee and helps you get a credit for the difference. The service works with most of the major US airlines (see the list here) but no foreign-based carriers.

Rental cars: Another site called Autoslash does basically the same thing for car rentals except they automatically re-book you if the price goes down since you generally don’t pay for car rentals in advance. They also search and apply for coupons you may be eligible for. However, they don’t include all car rental companies. (You can see this list here.)

Hotels: Tingo works the same exact way for hotel reservations. They automatically re-book you if the price drops and refund the difference back to your credit card. But unlike Autoslash, Tingo works with virtually every major hotel group and thousands of independent hotels.

There’s one more step you can take after booking the best deal you can find on Tingo. Just before the hotel becomes non-refundable, check an app called Hotel Tonight. It provides great last-minute hotel deals for select cities.

There are other ways to save money on travel but these methods to time your bookings don’t require any sacrifice and little to no extra time. In fact, you don’t really have to change your behavior much at all. Don’t you wish saving money was always this easy?