1) Tickets:
Most important things are tickets. Trust me, they can be the costliest part of your trip if not planned properly. One should always try to book the tickets as early as possible. The sites like kayak and skyscanner come very handy. Search for options like from “Bangalore” to “anywhere” , “anytime” and see if any place suits your budget. You can also check for certain months and then plan your travel accordingly.
2) Say no to weekend travels:
Try not to travel on a weekend. The weekends tickets are usually more costy than the weekday tickets. Also the weekends differ from one country to another. For eg, in India, saturday and sunday are treated as weekend while in Egypt, Friday, saturday are weekends.Try to make use of such differences.
3) Offseason travel :
Make the most of the offseason. For most of the places, there is not much difference between “season” and “offseason” in terms of the beauty of the place. Select a season which is not so touristy to get the best hotel and activity deals. At many places, you can stay at luxourious hotels at half the price in off seasons. You can also bargain for the activity charges in the offseason.
4) Hotel bookings :
Use sites like booking.com or Agoda for searching hotels. Sort by popularity. You can put a filter on price range and customer review. (Dont go for hotel which have high rating but very less no. of reviews. They might not be that good).
Sites like Booking.com , agoda etc have a commission tied with the hotels. To get a cheaper deal, locate a good rated hotel/hostel at booking.com for eg, go to the hotel and ask for a better price. If it is offseason, it is highly likely that you will get a better price. Worst case, you can stay at the same price as mentioned on booking.com, which too isnt bad either.
5) Free WiFi:
In many developed countries, you can get free wifi access at hostels/ hotels/ Mc. Donalds outlets /buses/trains etc. Make full use of it. For not so developed countries, buy a sim card with good Data . (dont buy it from airport, it is usually expensive there). That will be handy to make local calls for activities and hotel bookings. Keep some skype balance too for urgent international calls.
6) Currency:
For small,not so developed countries, it is better to carry small denomination of dollars/euros. It is better than extracting money out of ATM machines there.
Always try to make all payments in the local currency. A penny saved is a penny earned.
7) Transport:
Use local transport as much as possible and don’t shy away from walking few extra miles 🙂
8) Free accommodation?
Register on sites like couchsurfing.com. There people offer accommodation in their houses for free. Just check the reviews one has got on couchsurfing site, read their “about me” and you can decide whether or not you want to stay with that person. Many a times, making local friends on couchsurfing helps you in getting better insight of the place, specially in the places where language might be a barrier with most of the people.
9) Free travel?
Make full use of your travel miles and hotel points for booking. Ask for upgrades in hotels as well as flights, you never know when you might get lucky.
10) Live like a local:
Try learning a few words in the local language, like the basic numbers, thank you etc and get ready for wonderful surprises. Nothing will please anyone more than seeing someone putting an effort to learn their language and be like him.
11) Track your expenses:
Create a daily budget for yourself and keep a check on it. There are several accounting apps available in the market. The one that I use personally is the free version of Splitwise. Few others are Expensify , XE Currency, CheckPlease etc.You can keep a track of how much you spent, split with your friends, change currencies, track in xls and lot more. You can create several trips and track your expenses.
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