Cheap ways to go on vacation

Booking a flight + hotel for multiple people can be very expensive. (good luck flying to the US from EU with hotel for <$1000)
With so many flight / hotel tickets being sold, there must be a way to obtain them cheaper.
Like people selling their tickets because they can't go, or leftover tickets.
There are sites that promote that they find the "cheapest" way to go for you, but those are still extremely expensive.
Does anyone have experience / useful links or good tips for this?
I don't travel often and would like to start travelling more, but not for these ridiculous prices that are being offered.
I live in the EU so I'm not looking for US -> US trips (or similar).
Any help much appreciated!

 

Hey @Astro. I am pretty good at finding great vacation deals within EU and can help you out!

Last Christmas I gave my whole family a vacation to Budapest, flight and 2 night at an apartment hotel. I've also travelled cheap to Italy, Spain, Greece to mention a few. I usually find trips for $100-200 and everything from a weekend to a full week.

 

Sure would love to!

 

@Astro
If you don't have a specific date in mind and could take time off work with not much notice. Take a look at holiday pirates.
They post deals/price errors etc usually they are for dates in the next couple of weeks. Or very last minute. But it's still possible to find some in advance

I always use skyscanner when I travel to check flights. And usually just put from my city to everywhere. Then you can see which place would be cheapest to fly to.

Then is time to do research. You have a list of locations you can get to. Now you need to see which is cheap to stay in. For example for me I can usually fly to Scandinavia for 10euro each way. But I know that once there it costs a fortune. So a flight to kyiv may be better (even if it costs 40eu more etc as cost of living is cheaper once there)

I always use 1 of 4 places to choose accom
1) couch surfing. Go on the app and you can usually find someone to host you there for free. Obvs comes with risks. But I've met many cool people that way
2+3) booking.com /Airbnb. Neither need much explanation
And 4) local fb groups. Students like to rent out their rooms for weekend or there. Are short term rentals. Just search the city you're going to and rooms or accommodation on fb and you'll find groups

OK accom sorted. Now you need to look for cost of living hm a beer or food will cost.
Numbeo or expatistan are good for this just type the city and voila. Numbeo is good as you can compare 2 cities

And finally. If you want to travel once in a country. From one city to another.
Try blablacar a car sharing app
Or flixbus
Both seem to always have reasonable prices

Rome2rio is a good comparison site too.
In the UK if you're gonna take a train its best to compare it on this website
Split Train Tickets, Split Ticketing, Split Your Tickets - SplitTrainTickets.net
As usually its cheaper to travel on 2 tickets (probs don't even need to change trains) than on one direct.

Hope this helps. And if you need any help don't hesitate to ask qs
Ive lived in 5 EU countries. And frequently travel throughout EU for as cheap as possible

 

Ryanair “cheap flights” website, literally sells tickets for £9 to some places going up to £14.99.

I watch a youtuber called ClickForTaz and she uses and shared this method. She stays at bed & breakfasts’ or AirBnB.

I’ve not yet utilised this because I don’t know if I’d want to stay at an airbnb, but even for a day trip £5each way is a bargain.

Went to egypt last Jan, stayed in a resort hotel, private beach, several swimming pools, lovely hotel good buffet, for 7nights, all inclusive. Spent £200, on flight ticket & hotel & additional for 23kg luggage maybe.

Via Easyjet, used Loveholidays website. Proper bargain. Maybe spent a total of £500, for the trip, £10 on visa, the expenses, out of hotel food & travel was cheap, cost of phone data was the most expensive.

Included a safari jeep ride in the dessert, several different cultural shows, boat trip in the red sea, halal mcdonalds, grocery shopping, horse riding, camel riding, and any cost of bringing things souvenirs back, buying photos. Ooh also hiring electric scooters around the resort.

They have a shop in the mall called Spinneys. Stupidly Cheap af. Could of easily even afforded to go to another part of Egypt (city) as a day trip.

It was last minute btw. Sometimes you just have to keep looking out for the deals.

I think if I ever want to holiday again I will use loveholidays.

 

I've even gotten flights from Sweden to UK for £4,90 with RyanAir lol!

No matter where you travel you'll always get a better deal if you book months in advance. Should've booked my summer vacay in Oct or Nov, but it's not too late now.

 

I've learned over the course of the last few years that using AIRBNB can cut down on the costs of your stay without having to stay in a lower quality place. You can rent multi-million dollar houses for only a few hundred per day. These are prices for 'decked' out houses with hot tubs and all that jazz. I'm sure you can find normal AIRBNB's for much cheaper.

As for cutting down on airline costs I personally am fortunate enough to have friends in the travel agency business who accumulate points throughout the year and allow me to buy those point for pennies on the dollar which I use to buy tickets. Maybe you know someone, or someone you know knows someone who can do this for you.

 

Flights can be easy to find for cheap, but any hotel/airbnb is still stupidly overpriced on all sites I look (most cities I would want to visit start at like €60/night for something extremely small and overall shitty place to stay)

 

Rent a place away from centre/centrum, and rent a car. It's way more convenient and cheaper (at least for bigger cities).

 

Couch surfing is your best bet.
Or if you're not picky use hostel world. can still usually find private rooms in hostels for cheap if you don't want to share a dorm room with others

 

No way, show us your ways!

 

countries like ukraine/greece should be cheap. i would still pick hotels over hostels, maybe you could find vacation packs that include both flight and hotel prices that would make it cheaper(not always though).

 

Hey dude, I've used Vrbo a few times as well. Maybe try checking there. The thing that really gets you with places like Airbnb are the cleaning fees. Ridiculously high. Some don't have cleaning fees or have very cheap fees. Try looking for ones that offer no cleaning fee or a lower cleaning fee. I've also contacted the owners of houses directly and spoke through email asking for a lower rate. This has worked twice for me in the past and actually got the price dropped to almost half by sending the money directly to the owner of the house instead of going through Airbnb. The worst they can do is say no.

I've personally been refunded the entire cleaning fee and given complimentary champagne for complaining about the house not being clean enough or something not working. For example once the hot tub didn't work and they refunded like 400 bucks from the total I had already paid. Another time the cleaning lady I guess thought the house wasn't rented until the next day so when we arrived the house was half cleaned. They ended up giving 350 back plus dropped off two bottles of champagne.

 

If all else fails there's always motel 6 for like 40 to 70 a night depending on where you go

 

India i heared thats super cheap , i look for some vidz on utube they all saying u can go there leave of couple day with 100 200 $

 

It is all about the season and when you book it, there are many sites if you put in the work and time where you can find the right price.

You really have to grind and put in the work, I travel often myself and if it wasn't for the constant searching and time I put it I would probably never travel because it's so expensive lol.