The little-known insider tricks even travel agents use to save money on plane fares
WHILE Brits looking to save money on their next holiday abroad will be familiar with money-saving hacks like Google Flights, there are other ways to get cheaper flight prices.
One woman has clawed back the cash by implementing two travel hacks that most people might not know about.
Julie Rose is a travel coach at Boutique Travel Advisors, a website aimed at curating luxury trips.
In an article in Go Banking Rates, Julie shared the money-saving tricks she has used to nab cheaper plane tickets.
She said: “If you need to fly a foreign airline, sometimes you can save on your fare by changing your currency to that of the home country of the airline.
“Run the numbers for each and use a currency exchange calculator, and make sure you pay with a credit card that carries no foreign transaction fees.”
Julie revealed that she’d saved $40 (£31) on one of her flights by swapping the currencies.
The full-time digital nomad also recommended forcing layovers to save on the price of flights.
She added: “On those long-haul flights, sometimes it’s cheaper to combine two one-ways than take the combo flight you’re offered.”
In the article, Julie gave her own example of a flight she recently booked.
She explained that a flight from Buenos Aires to Mexico in January, with a layover in Bogota, was hundreds more than a one-way flight to Lima followed by another flight to Mexico City.
While this trick will require a lot more patience, it could save hundreds of pounds.
There are other ways to secure cheaper flight prices too.
Earlier this month, holiday booking expert Gilbert Ott revealed the two days every year when passengers are guaranteed to find cheaper flight prices.
He explained that Black Friday and Cyber Monday were the closest things holidaymakers would likely get to “a magical day to book travel”.
If you’ve missed out on these recent deals, Mr Ott also recommended setting price alerts.
This way price changes are emailed directly to you, so you don’t have to keep checking Skyscanner and airline websites for price drops.
Fox News’ “CyberGuy” Kurt Knutsson explained how to use Google Flight price trackers so people could make sure they didn’t get ripped off on their tickets.
In a video shared on the Fox website, he said: “There’s an amazing feature on Google that lets you track the prices of flights to anywhere you want to go.
“Go to flights.google.com and put in the cities you want to travel to and from. Next select your dates of travel and tap ‘search’.
“Where it says ‘track prices’ toggle this on either with the dates you’ve already selected, or if you’re a little more flexible, meaning prices could also be more flexible, toggle on the ‘any dates’ option.
“You get price alerts to receive emails the moment the price of the flight changes. It’s amazing.”
Meanwhile, this is how other savvy travellers save money with mistake air fares.
And this is how to always find TUI’s cheapest flights.