How I Found the Best Travel Hack Ever
I recently found the best travel hack ever. Now, I don’t say that lightly. I write a blog about travel hacking, and I’ve been trying to find ways to get cheap flights for over 5 years. But this is easily one of the most effective ways to find cheap flights that I’ve ever seen.
I’m not talking about going to some obscure, non-English speaking country so you can save a few bucks. I’m talking about saving 30% or more on all of your flights! That’s 1/3 off all your airfare costs! It’s an incredible deal!
I’m guessing you’re probably wondering how this can possibly work? Well, it’s actually a pretty simple trick that most people don’t know about. All you need to do is go to Google Flights (https://www.google.com/flights/) and change the currency that it’s using. That’s it. Just click the little drop-down menu in the top navigation bar and choose whatever country you’re from (or whatever country has a strong currency compared to where you’ll be traveling).
What’s the best travel hack ever? If you are interested in cheap flights, there is one thing that will make a more significant difference to your flight costs than anything else. And it feels like a hack even though it’s perfectly legal. What is this wonderful method I hear you ask? It’s so simple: Book a return ticket and throw away the outbound half.
What do you mean? How can I do that?
Well, sometimes an airline will charge more for a return ticket than two singles. For example, fly Lufthansa from London to Los Angeles and back and the fare might be $1000. But book a one-way flight outbound and another back and it might cost $900 each way; $1800 total. These magic return fares exist because airlines make deals with other airlines or with consolidators who buy a lot of tickets at once and resell them at a discount. So if you don’t care about the date or route for your outbound flight, then you can get a much cheaper ticket by booking an open jaw itinerary: fly into one airport and out of another, or even book a return ticket where the outbound journey takes place after the inbound one!
The next time you have to book a flight and you’re thinking of using an online travel agent (OTA) like Expedia, Travelocity, or Orbitz, STOP!
There is one thing every single person* in the world can do to find better flights. It’s so easy that it boggles my mind that more people don’t do it. And the best part? It doesn’t take any longer to do than using an OTA. In fact, it’s probably faster.
So here’s my best travel hack ever:
Use Google Flights or Momondo.
That’s it. Seriously.
Why not use an online travel agent?
I recently posted a video about a travel hack that I’ve been doing for years. It lets you find incredibly cheap flights, like the cheap Norwegian flight to Stockholm I recently booked for $115 and the Norwegian flight to London I booked for $189.
The video has been viewed almost 300,000 times on Facebook and shared by more than 6,000 people. But many people asked me, “How do you actually book these tickets?” So today I’m going to show you how to book flights using this travel hack.
Step 1: Find Cheap Flights
Download the app Hopper, which predicts the best time to buy your flight. Then set up a price alert for your desired destination. Hopper will tell you when the cheapest time to fly is and what the best deal is (in my case it was $189 in August from LAX to London).
Step 2: Book Your Flight with British Airways
Go to BritishAirways.com and type in your departure city and arrival city (in my case Los Angeles to London). Set the date to be one day before your desired date of travel (in my case, August 16th) and search for an economy class ticket using “one-way.”
In this post, we’ll show you exactly how to find cheap flights, quickly and easily. We’ll also teach you some of the best travel hacks that will make your next flight nearly free.
1. Finding Cheap Flights: The Traditional Way
The traditional way to buy a flight is through an airline or travel agency. Whether you go to a travel agent in person, or reserve tickets online, there’s no denying that finding cheap flights the traditional way is easy.
But there’s one big downside to finding cheap flights the traditional way: it can be expensive. Airline companies and travel agencies always charge a fee. Sometimes they’re upfront about it, but often they are not (they just have higher prices).
2. Finding Cheap Flights: The CheapAir Way
At CheapAir, we specialize in helping people find cheap flights. We’ve developed innovative technologies that make the process of finding and booking flights fast and easy for travelers (and for ourselves).
You will not be surprised to hear that searching for cheap flights is one of the easiest ways to save money while traveling. There are many different booking search engines available, so how do you know which one is the best to use?
After a lot of online research and personal experience, I can tell you that Skyscanner is my absolute favorite search engine. I use it every single time I want to look for a flight. And even on the occasions when I don’t book through Skyscanner, I still use it to find the lowest prices before I go somewhere else. That’s why they are the only booking engine displayed in our travel tools section.
Skyscanner works like most search engines – all you have to do is enter your departure date, destination (optional), and origin (optional) – and then you can browse all of the available flights from various airlines.
Last year, I booked a cheap flight with a combination of two one-way tickets. It was my first time booking this way and I was surprised at how easy it was to find the ticket. Since then, I’ve booked almost all of my flights this way and have saved hundreds of dollars. This post will explain what I’m talking about, why you should do this for your next trip, and show you how to book your own multi-city flight.
Booking a multi-city ticket is different than buying two one-way tickets. A one-way ticket is buying a flight from point A to B on a specific date, while a multi-city ticket is buying both flights at once on different dates or from different destinations. When booking online or over the phone, you can select “multi-city” instead of “one-way” or “round trip” when searching for flights. If you have ever added a stopover to your international flight, that would be considered a multi-city ticket (and many people don’t realize they can stopover in more than one place).
Why Book Multi-City Tickets?
There are many reasons why you would want to book a multi-city ticket