44 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | FRIVOLIST
Qsaltlake.com |
Issue 301 | JUNE 20, 2019
the frivolist
9 Seemingly cheaper travel ‘hacks’ that could be robbing you blind BY MIKEY ROX
Cutting
costs on travel can be a boon for your vacay budget, but there’s a dark side to some of those “discounts.”
Flying budget airlines Travel discounts apps and sites may populate your air travel search with lower-cost,
no-frills lines like Spirit or Norwegian, but what you’re saving on the front end could cost you even more on the back end. Unlike slightly higher-priced traditional airlines, “budget” carriers charge for everything, from carry-on bags (and the fee is WAY more than traditional airlines) to food and water (yes, you have
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to buy your own water on Spirit), so if you don’t plan accordingly, you can end up spending a fortune to get there in a seat that’s been consciously designed to be less comfortable. And that’s assuming you get there… I booked a flight to Paris from Dublin on Ryanair many years ago and the airline canceled the flight, ruined our New Year’s Eve, stranded us in the airport (we slept on the floor), only to send us to London a day later without so much as a sorry or a flight voucher.
Being flexible with your flight time and duration to save money You can save a lot of money by choosing to fly at an inconvenient time or booking a flight with a long layover. But at what cost to your vacation? “Oftentimes, it pays to spend more on a flight if it means you’ll get to your destination faster or at a better time,” says Calvin Iverson, travel expert at TravelPirates. “If you’re spending 10 hours doing nothing at an airport during a layover or arriving in your destination at three in the morning, are you really having a good vacation?” Or you can do what I do – book the longest layover possible in a place you’ve never been. I took a 16-hour layover in Iceland from London about 15 years ago – because when was I ever going to go to Iceland – and I loved it so much, I’ve returned twice. It was the best part of my vacation by far.
Clearing your “cookies” to game the system One misconception is that when you’re searching online for flights that you need to clear your search browser history before evaluating flights as the airlines have algorithms that will automatically increase flight prices if you continue searching for flights to the same destination. This may be counterintuitive as some airlines will reduce a flight price in the hope of securing your booking. Very often airlines will offer reduce rates to frequent flyers so browsing for flights in incognito mode could actually cost you money.
