If you want to travel, but don’t have unlimited funds, don’t worry! You can still take your dream trip. There are plenty of tools and tricks to help you find the best deals on flights, hotels, and everything in between. We’ve compiled a list of the 7 best tools to make the most of your airfare.
1. Airfare Watchdog (www.airfarewatchdog.com)
This tool is great for domestic and international flights. The site allows you to choose the closest airport to you and then see deals that are departing from that airport within the next three months. You can also set up email alerts for a specific destination or route so that you can stay informed about any deals that pop up.
2. Kayak (www.kayak.com)
Kayak is a great tool for comparing prices on flights, hotels, and rental cars. You can create alerts for when prices change so that you can keep track of whether or not the price is going up or down without needing to constantly check back in on it yourself.
You don’t have to be rich to travel. You just need to know how to use tools that will help you make the most of your airfare.
You can do it with a little effort, and these seven tips:
1. Use Smarter Travel’s airfare search engine, which searches hundreds of sites for the cheapest flights possible.
2. Visit AirfareWatchdog, which shows you changes in fare prices for certain routes as well as individual fares that are below average for specific airlines (as of this writing, there’s a $400 round-trip flight from Atlanta to Paris). You can also sign up for e-mail alerts.
3. Subscribe to Farecast, which predicts whether a fare is likely to increase or decrease for certain routes over a set period of time (e.g., one week).
4. If you’re flexible about when you leave and return from your trip, try Kayak’s fare watcher tool, which will send you an e-mail if the price of your preferred flight increases or decreases (you can even specify the percentage by which the fare must change before you receive an alert).
5. Go directly to airline websites (this is where many travelers overlook deals) — particularly those
Flightfox, Flystein, and Airfare Watchdog all work to help find cheap fares. But there are plenty of other sites and apps that can help you save on airfare. Here are seven we’ve found for your next trip.
1. Vayama: This site works like Expedia for international flights. The best part is that it’s simple to use and aggregates flights from multiple airlines.
2. Yapta: This tool will monitor fare prices for you, letting you know when the price drops so you can get the best deal possible.
3. SeatGuru: This site helps you find the best seat on a given plane, whether it’s leg room or a quiet spot.
4. Google Flights: This is a great search engine that allows you to filter results by price, duration, and more, making it easy-to-use and efficient to find the flight that’s right for you.
5. Kayak Explore: This app helps you choose your next vacation based on budget and location preferences by giving you a map with different destinations based on those criteria. It even lists the price of roundtrip tickets—a huge help when planning your next getaway!
6. TripAdvisor: While this is commonly
Here are seven of the top tools that can help you find the best deals on airfare, rental cars and hotels:
1. AirfareWatchdog helps you find the cheapest flights by providing a list of the lowest fares by airport, as well as fare alerts for all U.S. and Canadian airports, so you can book your airfare when prices drop.
2. Bing Travel’s Price Predictor tells you whether to buy now or wait and gives you a prediction on how airfare prices will change in the next seven days.
3. The Flight Deal delivers deals on flights from all airlines to your inbox daily, so that you don’t miss out on any savings opportunities.
4. For those who love to travel but hate the hassle of planning and booking, Hipmunk aims to make that process easy by providing a comprehensive search that allows you to compare airfare, hotel availability and prices on sites such as Expedia, Orbitz and Hotels.com through one platform.
5. Kayak allows you to search hundreds of travel sites at once for deals on airfare, hotels, car rentals and more to ensure that you’re getting the best price possible.
6. Skiplagged shows you hidden-city
Airfares, like most things nowadays, go up and down in price depending on supply and demand. If lots of people want to fly somewhere and there are limited seats available, prices will be high. But if it’s a slow travel time of year or an unpopular route (like from Dallas to Minneapolis), you’ll probably be able to find better deals.
Since airlines change flight prices constantly, signing up for an alert service can help you save money down the line. These sites will send you a notification if the price changes on the flight you’re interested in so that you can book it before prices increase even more — or before the deal is gone for good.
It’s important to note that these services don’t guarantee that they will notify you of every price change; they just promise to notify you with as many as possible. Also, some may not display every airline or route, so always check multiple sites. Here are seven tools that can help you catch the best price on your next trip:
Airlines offer their lowest prices directly to their customers and through travel agents. But you can get the same deal on your own by doing a little homework.
Setting airfare alerts with Airfarewatchdog, Google Flights, Skyscanner and Kayak will let you know when there’s a good fare to your destination.
Use Hopper to find out if your ticket price is likely to go down in the next seven days or up in the next 30. If it’s going to drop, Hopper will tell you when to wait and when to buy. If it’s going up, buy now.
Compare fares across different airlines with Momondo and Cheapoair.
Check alternate airports in your destination city with Hipmunk and Skiplagged (and be sure to check for hidden-city tickets as well).
The first step is to go to Google Flights and see what flights are available on your desired dates. You can also set up a price alert and get an email when the price rises or falls.
Once you have an idea of what you’re willing to spend, there are a few other tools I used for booking my tickets:
Secret Flying – This website offers flight deals by city. If you’re not picky about where you want to go, you can set up a free email alert and get notifications when cheap flights become available.
Scott’s Cheap Flights – For $39/year (or $129/lifetime membership), Scott’s Cheap Flights sends you email alerts with cheap flights that they find. I signed up for this service because I have travel dates that are pretty flexible, so the cheap flight doesn’t have to land in the United States on a certain day (that way I don’t have to worry about finding a return flight that lands in the US on the right date).
The Flight Deal – Similar to Scott’s Cheap Flights, The Flight Deal offers premium service for $49/year, which is less than half the price of Scott’s Cheap Fl