If you don’t want to buy a package deal blindly, as many people do not, you have to do some of your travel planning on your own. The problem with this for many people is that they do not know what they want before they start looking for deals, and they feel that everything they find is too expensive. You have to learn to be flexible about your vacation and also know how to choose the right place when you see big discounts in front of you. You want to have a great vacation, but you can’t go on that trip if you can’t afford it. Plan carefully and have the time of your life.

Rule number one in saving money with your own travel planning is to be flexible. This means that even though you may think it best to leave on a Friday night and get home on the following Sunday night so that you can squeeze as much time out of a week as you can, this is not the way to save money. Typically, flights are far more expensive on weekends (which includes Friday) than any other day of the week. If you can work it so that you are flying out on a Wednesday and coming back in eight days on a Thursday, you can save quite a bit of money in your travel planning through just your plane tickets alone.

The same can be said about hotel rooms. They cost more on holidays, weekends, and when special events are in town. If you can keep most of your stay on the weekdays, and cut out a few weekend nights by traveling at odd times, you can knock a few hundred dollars or more off a long hotel stay. If your travel planning is about a weekend trip only, this tip won’t help much, but planning ahead can. A hotel may give you a discount for booking very early as opposed to the last minute.

Read more…