How to save your travel pennies!

As we’ve mentioned before on our blog, we haven’t yet *pray, pray* reached that ultimate traveller’s dream of being paid to galavant around the world and we still work full-time. So, over the years we’ve built up some cunning little ways to build more travel into our lives for minimum cost.

So, being the lovely people we are, we thought we’d share these little tips to all fellow wanderlusts and salary slaves, to help you out on your quest for freedom!

1) BA Avios air miles (possibly more applicable to UK readers)

Before signing up to BA Avios we did have a good look around at the different airline offers. For us, BA seems to be the best in terms of flexibility, and most importantly, how easy it is to collect the airmiles. For example, as we both shop in Tesco (a UK supermarket), we now automatically convert all our Tesco points to Avios! Claire also earns avios points through her utility bills with Eon! This frantic accumulating (we buy EVERYTHING in Tesco) earns us around 24,000-30,000 avios points a year which, in turn, allows us enough for 1-2 reward flights. You generally need around 30,000 points for 2 x return trips in Europe and all you need to pay is the tax, which is usually £30 each! Baragin! Our one tip: only use your avios points on short haul European flights (from the UK) or for an upgrade. As you still have to pay the tax, long haul will still work out as expensive at around £400-500, so it’s really not worth it.

2) Join the flying clubs

We’re both members of the BA Executive club, which costs nothing to join (nope, you don’t need to be a fancy person to be a member!). This allows you to earn tier points when you travel so you can progress from blue, to bronze, to silver and finally gold (ooohh!) All tiers come with different perks and advantages. By being a member, you can also request a little executive card, which can be swiped in shops, airports and even on the plane, so you can earn even more avios points *clap, clap*

2) Save money on city breaks

Our one golden rule of city breaks is to never book a hotel! Why? Because basically, they cost a fortune. Instead, we always use our two favourite sites, Owners Direct or Airbnb! We’re sure most of you have heard of these sites, but if not, they’re basically websites where owners of apartments, houses, villas etc can advertise their property. The costs are far lower than a hotel and usually far nicer. We love the fact that we’re not confined to just a hotel room and have some other rooms to relax in and enjoy when we’re away.

4) Don’t be a weekend flyer!

Working full time, it may seem more annual leave “friendly” to plan your quick breaks around a weekend (Friday-Monday). But, just like school holidays, airlines know this and prices are usually hiked up on these days. We’ve found that travelling Tuesday to Friday is the cheapest and also far quieter (no children, hen/stag dos, generally annoying groups!)

5) Save money on luxury breaks

If you want to splash out on a more luxurious holiday, we suggest using a website like Secret Escapes, who offer pretty heavily discounted hotels (some including flights) to more exotic and luxurious destinations and resorts. We’ve booked through this site a few times now, and the hotels have been amazing value. If you do go with a hotel, always go with the breakfast option too! These standard of hotels usually have an impressive breakfast range, which means, with the right amount of stuffing your face, you only need a mini lunch and thus even more money saved!

So, there you have it, our main money saving tips. Perhaps they’re not that impressive but we’ve found that by really taking the time to look at prices, air mile schemes etc, there is a real saving to be had! Do you guys have any other tips we’ve missed out on? Share away!

*We should probably note that we haven’t been paid to endorse any of these schemes or companies, we just genuinely use them all the time and think they’re great! 🙂

 

 Category: bucketlist, Holidays, Travel, vacation      Tagged: british airways, flying, money, tips, venice

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