Secrets of a travel agent: how to bag the best deals
Posted on
From travel agencies to hotels to online travel distribution, in the last twenty years, travel industry veteran Tenele Conway has worked in all of them.
Here are her top 10 hacks to help you get a deal for your next trip.
Be flexible
Whilst being limber will help on your long haul flights, the flexibility I refer to is about your style of travel planning. The number one way to save on your travel is to not fix your destination or dates. Instead, read the papers, seek out the travel adverts and watch the deals. If you aren’t in a fixed mindset about where to go and when, you can jump on a deal the moment you see a good one and this can save you thousands of dollars on all manner of travel styles, flights, cruises, tours and hotels.
Book your flights early
If being flexible isn’t your style, then you need to book early. Airline pricing is like the dark arts and prices are adjusted daily based on the market and airline sales. Whilst last minute deals can pop up, they are rare in these post-COVID times. The general trend is for flight prices to increase as seats on the flight sell. Booking up to 11 months in advance is the best way to secure yourself a reasonable airfare.
Use Google flight alerts
Educating yourself on average flight prices and pricing trends isn’t as hard as it sounds. Google offers a free service called Google Flights which allows you to view price graphs that chart the historical pricing of a route over a time period. There’s also a date grid that shows the pricing of your route throughout the month. My favourite feature is a simple toggle button that allows you to track prices for a specific route on specific dates. Once toggled on Google will email you each time the price changes on your tracked flights so you can see if they are trending up or down in price so you know when to pounce.
Take advantage of the early bird season
Each year, around September and October a range of travel companies offer what they call “earlybird deals” for travel in the following year. Traditionally these deals are focused on tours and cruises in European destinations but you will find similar deals for Canada and America as well. The offers are for a limited time only and will often require full payment but the savings can be in the thousands.
Consider premium economy on a budget airline
Like many, do you have champagne tastes on a beer budget? If business class isn’t in the budget but you’re tired of being crammed into cattle class then I recommend taking a look at the premium economy cabins on a budget airline like Scoot. Whilst there may not be televisions in the seats and meals and decidedly budget, where it counts it’s got your back. Often, for less than the cost of an economy ticket on a full service airline you will get wider seats, more legroom and a smaller, quieter cabin. It’s worth taking a look if you want to stretch your legs and not your wallet.
Know your flight routes
Understanding where an airline flies and where their hub is can help you get more bang for your buck by turning layovers into bonafide destinations. Airlines often standardise fares to a range of destinations, take British Airways for example. Their fares from Australia to London are often the same as the fares to a whole range of their UK destinations. This means you can have a stopover in their hub city of London and fly on to your next destination for no more than the cost of the airport taxes. Boom, you have a free flight.
Read your emails
Marketing emails aren’t spam if you actually want to read them and I recommend reading them. Email marketing is a key way that airlines and travel operators let their customers know that they have a deal coming out. So sign up to your favourite companies and check out their offers, it could save you a boatload of money.
Call the hotel
There’s so many options when booking your hotels online and there’s some great websites like Booking.com and Expedia. Yet few people know that most hotel chains and online resellers of those hotels are ruled by a system called rate parity. It’s there to ensure that a hotel or their reseller aren’t undercutting each other, but for you, it means that online rates for hotels are fairly similar no matter where you book. The trick here is, this rule only applies to hotel rooms sold online. If you call a hotel, there are no rules around rate parity, so you might just grab a cheaper rate.
Consider low-season travel
The cheapest time to travel anywhere is when everyone else isn’t travelling there. At first glance travelling to the northern hemisphere in winter or to the tropics in the wet season may not be overly appealing, but it can be a magical experience. Rug up and Europe without the crowds is spectacular. And the rainy season in the tropics often means brief showers that pass very quickly. A few compromises in the weather and your holiday could be half the price of travelling in the peak season.
Know the system and game the system
Be curious when it comes to travel. Talk to staff in hotels about their rates and talk to airline staff about their routes. Consider using a travel agent, an experienced agent has a lifetime of knowledge that will benefit you and they make their money via commissions so it costs the consumer very little to use their services. It’s all about being informed. The more you know about how it all works, the better informed you will be about how to secure a deal for your next trip.
