Book in Advance
Booking in advance through specialised booking agencies and discount sites will have you in for some great early-bird savings, but at the other end of the tunnel is the prospect of some truly insane last-minute deals. Just imagine having the option of staying in a decent-enough 2-3 star establishment in Cairo for less than US$7 (in 2016) for the night, if only because it’s close to the pyramids you’ve always wanted to explore and just so that you can say you’ve had the experience. Those kinds of deals are offered to travellers who are part of the database of booking sites and travel agents, usually becoming available as a result of low occupancy rates at hotels, hostels, backpackers, lodges, etc.
Seek Out Group-Savings, Special Deals & Promos
You’re never quite a real traveller if you don’t dedicate a good chunk of your time actively seeking out group booking savings, special deals and promotions. It goes beyond merely signing up to specialised group savings platforms like Groupon – those are the bare basics which will have you at least sifting through some special offers delivered to you via email, even if a good portion of those offers you could never realistically take full advantage of. Every once in a while you’ll uncover a gem of a deal though, so the bare basics are definitely in order.
The best special deals and promotions to help you save some serious money while travelling, however, are those which are not so obvious. It’s up to you to be able to make the connection between something like scoring a free trip to a beach party in Ibiza and making sure you have a beach-ready body. Sometimes that type of connection is laid out quite openly, like in the case of the protein supplement maker, Maxinutrition and their Ibiza 30 day physique transformation challenge. This is undoubtedly one of those competitions which you otherwise have to search much more thoroughly for in order to have a consistent stream of them to enter, but again, if you invest the right amount of time you’ll save a lot of money on your travels in this way.
Make Friends with Locals
The advantages of the oldest trick in the book seem to be hidden in plain view, in that not enough travellers make an effort to make friends with locals. It sometimes costs nothing for a local to offer you a place to crash in a spare room they have, but for the traveller this can make for some good savings on otherwise expensive regular accommodation.
Haggle and Negotiate
Never settle for the first price you’re offered on anything because it’s usually not the final price. Tourists in particular are targets for some serious milking, with street vendors and open-air market sellers particularly seeking to get the most money out of you. It’s not so much on a sinister level, but you need to give as good as you get. Pretend to walk away because “clearly all you have right now is just not enough” and often the real price of goods and some services will be revealed to you.
