Four Simple Travel Planning Tricks To Save For Later

Travel websites are spammed with marketing techniques that try to fool us into thinking that we are getting the best deals possible. Is that really the case? I’m one of those people who will tirelessly dig until I know I have exhausted all of my options before booking plane tickets or hotel rooms.

It’s a small, but valuable list… These are four travel planning tips that I think you’re going to like.

 

Clear cookies or search incognito

If you have the patience to search, you can find plenty of travel deals. However, sometimes if you’ve been hunting for an hour or two, Google might start catching on. In my experience, if I’m continually searching for flights to and from the same destination, the displayed prices keep rising. As a rule, I always choose to go incognito (when using Google Chrome) to prevent this from happening.

 

Ditch your regular booking routine

Sometimes it takes a simple change to find exactly what you’ve been searching for. Where are you planning to go? Have you looked into the airlines from your destination country? For whatever reason United States airlines charge exponentially higher than foreign airlines (from my experience). Always double check. This helped me score a round-trip flight to Brussels for $466 directly through Brussels Airlines.

 

Take price forecasting with a grain of salt

A new trend emerging seems to be price forecasting for airlines. Airfare prediction technology isn’t always the most reliable. At the end of the day, it’s up to your discretion of how good a deal the fare is. I will admit that apps like Hopper seem handy, but it’s unclear where they are pulling their data from. There is also Kayak’s price trend chart, which provides the likelihood of searched airfares rising or falling within the next week. The data incorporates year-over-year trends to determine when it’s the right time to buy. Kayak’s previous studies showed that the best time to book is 21 days out from your trip. Anything after that, you’ll have to bite the bullet and pay up.

Everyone is clueless as to how high or low airline prices will go. Airlines don’t even disclose how the fares are being calculated, so how reliable can “farecasting” truly be?

 

Beware of ‘top results’ in your search

I may be young, but I’m old enough to know that Google isn’t what it used to be. Don’t assume that anything on the first page of your search results, whether it’s a search engine or travel website. Top results, more often than not, scream “I paid to be here.” Or, it’s just a way for the company to prioritize its own services… That’s how Google got in trouble with the European Union. Go the extra mile and do extra research to verify that they really are the top pick.

Sticking To That Long Travel Check-list Will Ruin Your Next Trip

Time flies when you’re having fun, apparently so will your vacation if you over-plan. In an interview with Jenni Avins of Quartz, Marc Whittman, psychologist and author of Felt Time explains the phenomenon of time in relation to travel; an over-booked schedule will make time fly faster than you wanted it to.

I’m guilty of the offense. Once I have my airline tickets booked and my calendar marked, I go into full trip planning mode and make long lists of my ‘must do’s’. I can’t help it- my Type-A tendencies force me to plan out what I want to see and experience. I obsess over making sure that I will make the most out of my trip. Turns out, this could be doing exactly the opposite of what I intended.

According to Whittman, the key is to go into a trip with minimal planning and a flexible schedule. By opening up our travel calendars, the trip might feel longer and a heck of a lot less stressful when it’s time to head home.

If we go into a trip with a set itinerary for every hour of the day, we will be relying on the next step and anticipating the next activity. Basically, you’re planning your vacation away.

In Wittman’s words,

“Planning also speeds up the passage of time. Because there you’re always already in the future. You have this future perspective of your mind, and then you are actually not attending to what is happening right now.”

Have you ever noticed that you recall your emotions more clearly than the events themselves? That’s a big key in memory formation, which makes mindfulness an important practice during travel. Focusing your attention to your surroundings and maintaining a degree of self-awareness can lead to a more memorable trip.

Our gut reaction is to plan heavily for trips, thinking that it’ll reduce our stress upon arrival. However, the takeaway here is that if you want those precious moments away from work to last, less is more.