Booking Travel

Booking travel is the most expensive and arguably the most time consuming event when planning your trip. If you aren’t looking to find deals then this likely won’t be nearly as hard or time consuming, and you can just use any travel site. If you are looking to travel on a tight budget you’ll have to consider when you are book your travel for, where you fly out from, how long you are staying, and what sites to book your travel on.

The time of year you book to travel will significantly alter the prices. Around holidays flight prices will be significantly more than if you travel during the off season. My favourite time to travel is late May and June because the weather is often nice, there are fewer tourists, and you get the best deals. When travelling places in the northern hemisphere during July and August, such as Europe, prices skyrocket for flights, accommodation, and activities . Other great times for travel deals are September and January. These aren’t idea for most teachers, but if you can manage to get time off for any of these months I would highly recommend doing so. When booking anything, the key to being the most cost efficient is being flexible with the dates and times you plan to travel. The majority of people work during the week which doesn’t allow them to leave on a week day afternoon, which often makes flights cheaper during this time.

If you are located near a big city, you are in luck for travelling because these are often the cheapest locations to fly out of. The scale that larger airports operate on reduces the costs of operating. Often there is more competition between flight companies at larger airports which leads to some companies offering deals. In my experience, it is significantly more expensive to fly out of my local airport in Victoria rather than Vancouver. If you decide to start your travels out of the states, this isn’t always true and you might find better deals at smaller airports. There are significantly more flight paths and airlines making competition different depending on where you live in the US. Regardless of where you fly out from, travel airports have common routes making these flights cheaper to book for you main leg of travel.

When flying further distance, it is always best to stay for longer if you can to get the best value for travel. Flights are one of the most expensive parts of your trip, so the longer you stay the better value you will get. When travelling across continents I personally like to go for 2-3 weeks. This allows me to visit a larger geographical area and travel between countries with ease. Make sure you look check if you need a travel VISA, but most places in the world only require you to get one after 30-90 days. Staying for longer also allows me to have a slower travel pace, which allows me to fit more into my travel itinerary (read more about this on my blog).

Finding flights can be difficult when using a general google search. Instead of doing this you can use different online sites such as Google Flights and Skyscanner. Other online sites including Expedia, Booking.com, and Travelocity allow you to book accommodation, flights, activities, packages, and more. When booking flights, Google Flights calendar view provides you with pricing making it extremely user friendly, flexible, and efficient. Skyscanner is less efficient and gives you less information on the flights so I would recommend using Google Flights when possible.

In a new age of technology we don’t have to do the work ourselves and we can utilize AI to do most things for us. My question was, “Can AI find cheaper flight deals than I can?” I decided to ask ChatGPT to find me flight deals given my time range and duration of my trip (click to see thread). The simple answer is yes, AI can find cheaper deals than I could. My next thought was are these really good deals, or is there a catch. Further investigation led me to discovering the catch: most flights would be inconvenient because you are taking multiple airlines. Each airline has different policies so you might have to pay more for baggage for each leg of your trip which can be very expensive. All things considered, AI can be useful when you prompt it effectively, so consider what you are asking because you will only be provided with information based on what you input. If you ask for cost efficiency you cannot expect there won’t be hidden charges for things like baggage unless you ask AI for that to be included in the price. AI pricing did have some discrepancies between the answers provided and flight listings on websites. This suggest that AI may also not always be synched with the information on other sites. AI uses other search engines such as Expedia and Air Hint to find value and cheaper options that may not be found with Skyscanner or Google Flights. Some of these websites are difficult to navigate because they require specific dates to be input so AI could be useful for tackling that challenge. Overall I am impressed with how well AI performed. I might consider using it in the future to make sure the flights I find are the best deal across many sites.