Booking a Flight
Well of course this is one of the most important steps in traveling abroad! So if this is one of the most important steps in budgeting and scheduling for your trip overseas, I think people should spend more time in researching pricing. I’ve been on trips before where the group I was going with decided to purchase the ticket a month or so before we took off. The longer you wait to book your flight the higher premium you will end up paying.
I’m going to give a brief description of my trip and the extreme difference I saved on booking my flight. Like the title of the blog says I am traveling to Hong Kong. The duration of the trip is going to be the entire month of July. I have been planning and praying over this trip for several months. Last year for my plan ticket to Hong Kong I paid a little over $1700. I believe our group bought the tickets about a month and a half from our set date.
This year I bought my tickets maybe about two weeks ago now and I ended up paying a total of $1000. That is quite a difference in price. I almost paid for my ticket at half the price. Now keep in mind we are under a “recession” but I found the same principles to hold true before we came under this unfortunate economic downturn.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Orbitz is not the only online travel provider. There are plenty of other sources such as http://hotwire.com http://travelocity.com http://studentuniverse.com and I’m sure there are plenty of other ones. While I was searching for my ticket I searched a span of months that might be cheaper to travel in. After trying May, June and July, July turned out to be the cheapest month to travel to Hong Kong over the summer. I’m not sure if this is a yearly thing or just pertains to this year. Anyways over a period of two weeks I check daily the pricing of airplane tickets. You would not even believe me if I told you about how drastically they change each day.
So my suggestion is pay close attention to flight tickets and do a lot of research on the pricing. This is the first step in optimizing your trip budget so your piggy bank won’t be aching after you return from the trip. 😛
branhow.com 