Fasttrack Your Vacations Smartly!!!
Planning out of country trip with family can be a lot easier with the right approach and some planning. You’ll make your trip a lot cheaper right from fares, accommodation, sightseeing, shopping, travelling etc.… Here’s how to plan your next vacation without any unnecessary spending’s. These tips are useful irrespective of it being a planned trip or not. Hope you will find it useful.
Flight Bookings & VISA Documentation
Most of the apps offer similar features comparing flight options and using filters to change a few fields here and there. You can use Trip advisor, make my trip etc.… I personally use skyscanner.com. Set up price alerts it really helps.
But a word of caution whenever you search try and open in “a New incognito window” (for windows) or “new private window” (for mac users). Search engines like chrome store all your previous searches and accordingly the rates are sometimes hiked up if you visit the same sites regularly.
You need to keep a check on is card/bank offers and discount schemes that can help you save more. If you are a frequent traveller, then check your miles. Have a credit card with miles programs they do help reducing your ticket price to a great extent and you waste less time to get your boarding pass and lounge access is free.
Try and buy a refundable ticket, it’s useful as sometimes you get big discounts if airline is desperate to fill up seats so you can cancel the refundable ticket and buy a new one, and if you feel like extending your vacation and saves a lot of money.
Make sure you do a web check in and select your seats together. Web check-in shows you seat map which helps you take a call on which seat to reserve or whether it’s worth paying extra for a particular seat.
Sometimes its visa on arrival or before travelling, in both cases do make sure that you carry copies of necessary documents with you, Photographs especially. Also keep soft copies handy. You don’t want to pay a hefty amount for clicking your photos and waste your time at the immigration when you land.
Carry your currency but do check the dollar rate v/s local currency v/s INR. Sometime carrying dollars makes a lot of sense then local currency if dollar is stronger. To be safe carry a mix of local currency and dollars if possible.
Organise Your Travel Plan
Once all your bookings are done, you need to organise your travel plan. Ideally you should land around the time where you can directly check in, get fresh have your lunch and utilise the day. Set plans for the rest of the days and keep one-day buffer, but try and keep the last day of your trip light for last minute errands and packing.
You can use apps like TripIt. Or now Google also has their own travel planner called Google Trips these little things really help you get the most out of your trip. Have a checklist of things to do right from things to pack, places to visit, keeping shopping days and what to buy for who etc… Make sure you have all the boxes are ticked when you are back
Hotel Bookings
Most of the flight booking apps also offer hotel bookings. However, if the requirement is only to sleep at night and keep your luggage then I would recommend Air bnb. It has a simple interface where you can either type in or voice search your destination, choose the check in/check-out date and type of room you want. The app then gives you the lowest available price of various places along with their ratings. Just call the owner and take things forward. You save on a lot of taxes too which otherwise you pay when u book hotels.
Getting Ready
Travel light as much as you can, remember you will invariably buy stuff when u travel so try and carry one suitcase and then you can get good deals and new variety at the place you visit, buy bags along with your shopping list and dump all in it.
Make sure your international roaming is activated and has a decent pack for data and calling. There are a lot of cheaper options available now. If not, then still update google maps so that they work on offline mode.
Try reaching the airport well on time and once you get your boarding pass and pass the immigration you have time to shop at the duty free. There are a lot of good deals available on chocolates, perfumes and especially on alcohol and if you are single malt person then you will find yourself in heaven. Even if you are not you can always gift it to your near and dear ones. (if you are reading this and you know me then take this as a hint…)
Sightseeing
There’s no end to websites and forums where you can get travel and destination information. Try clubbing the places to visit according to your itenary. Enjoy the places you visit as you won’t be visiting them soon. You can use sygic travel helps a lot. While travelling buy the local card for computing like NOL Card in Dubai or Euro Rail pass for Europe. It saves a lot of money and makes commuting very easy and fast.
If there are activities to do and places to visit where you need to buy ticket’s, then better take deals online. Sites like group – on, or local sites in destination country give you a great deal on leisure activities, sightseeing or even eating out and they are valid for a week or month.
Shopping
Don’t be a compulsive shopper but looks for things you find interesting or are a speciality. Always try and stick to the purpose of your trip and keep shopping secondary. There are apps like around me, or even ask your friends on face book, it helps. Apps give you details about nearest malls and things to shop around. Another app you should have is the Matrix Travel Companion app. The app is relatively new but offers a clean, tile-based interface to help you find restaurants, tourist attractions, shopping areas and even guides you on best way to reclaim shopping/business VAT if available. There is a considerable amount which one can get refunded from VAT which you can take before you depart from the airport.
Geeta Ka Saar
An international trip with family would cost you a decent amount, just by using technology and preplanning you can save a lot without compromising on any front. You never know you might end up making your trip tickets free.
Hope the above were useful, so start planning and Enjoy your vacations.