misslindsey

I would love love love to travel somewhere amazingly beautiful like tanzania or thailand or the phillipines or french polynesia, but its very expensive for our budget. So I was thinking if we saved for a year we may have hopes of going somewhere such as those listed. But there are always ways to save money...so does anyone know of the best booking sites or clubs you can join that offer cheaper travel deals? Thanks!

Improviser

Well if budget is an issue I would drop the French Polynesians from your list. That's about as expensive as it gets anywhere in the world.

Thailand and the Phillipines on the other hand are generally considered pretty cheap places to visit if they interest you.

There is no 'best' booking site. The cheapest deals on any given day can be on any of numerous sites and if anyone could predict that, they would be able to make a fortune selling you the answer.

Rastaguytoday

When you're closer to going, come back with specifics; budget, length of trip, suggested ideas of places and an approximate date you would want to go.

suze

You just need to research the places you want to go. I've never used any middleman websites. I book my own plane and hotel. I travel solo most often, and packaged-deals are always based on double-occupancy, is one reason why I don't.

Another obvious way to bring down the overall cost of a trip is to go somewhere a less distance from your starting point. (you don't say where you're located, so I can't give an example, but you get the idea. For me in Seattle, Hawaii or Mexico are more affordable trips than flying to Europe or Australia).

sparkchaser

<i>so does anyone know of the best booking sites or clubs you can join that offer cheaper travel deals</i>

I use a combination of kayak, lastminute.de, and Air Berlin.

Improviser

Today there are more ways to book travel than ever and while some people might have their preferred ways, NONE of them guarantee you will find the cheapest price on any given day.

There are also many variables that apply to each proposed trip. For example, let's take suze travelling from Seattle to a Greek island for a 2 week sun and sand vacation.

It might well turn out the cheapest way was for her to book a flight to Vancouver, Canada then on Canadian Affair to London, England and then a 2 week package deal with no single supplement (they exist suze)to the island. Return would be the reverse.

In another example, someone flying to the same island from the UK might find that the same 2 week package suze took got them there cheaper than an air only price from another tour company. In other words, air plus hotel from one tour company was actually cheaper than air only. This does happen.

Now that person doesn't like the hotel included and decides to simply not use the hotel portion but instead to book their own hotel separately. So they are using the package simply for the cheaper flight cost. I have done this several times actually from the UK.

It is also possible sometimes to find that the cheapest one way fare to somewhere costs more than the cheapest return fare. In that case, someone may well buy a return ticket and throw away the return portion. I've also done that several times.

So say I wanted to fly X to Y and return to X from Z. I might find a return X-Y-X and a one way Z-X cost less than an open-jaw X-Y and Z-X ticket.

Another factor is time. Sometimes you can find a cheap fare but it has one or more stops enroute and often returning as well. You end up with 5 or 6 or 10 hours between connecting flights. That eats up your time. The question then becomes is the cost savings worth the time lost? So people may choose to take a direct flight even if it costs more.

There are a lot of factors and a lot of ways to try and find the best combination. NO sites can cover even half of them. Kayak for example (one of sparkchaser's preferred sites) will not cover ANY of the combinations I have given examples of.

They're never going to suggest flying Seattle-Vancouver-London-package deal to Greece and back. Or buying a return and throwing away the return portion if you asked them to give you a price for a one way flight to X.

suze

Leave me alone, Improviser.

sparkchaser

LOL suze.

suze

I have never once asked about Greece. I have never asked about packaged vacations without single supplements. I don't know why my name was brought up.

Improviser

OMG, you mentioned booking your own travel and package deals. You mentioned Seattle. So I simply took your comments as a base to use as an example for misslindsey.
"For example, let's take suze travelling from Seattle to a Greek island for a 2 week sun and sand vacation."

It isn't about YOU suze, hard as you might find that to understand. It's an EXAMPLE, as it says it is. And yes it does tell YOU that you are WRONG about "packaged-deals are always based on double-occupancy" but that is to let misslindsey know that is not the case.

suze

Packaged deals are not *always* based on double-occupancy, but most often area. Besides I don't want to take a packaged vacation regardless. If it's not about ME, quit using my name.

mftwanderer

Tanzania, Thailand and The Phillipines are are very cheap places to visit!

Backpackers frequently get by on $20/day in these places so by following some of these tips you should easily cut down your expenditure

http://www.myfunkytravel.com/backpackerbasics.html

mftwanderer

skyscanner is another good site for finding cheap flights!

november_moon

I book my trips myself too. I have considered doing some sort of package before, but it never really works out for my needs. So, first I find a good airfare (or use miles since I travel for work and always have miles available) - especially when going to inexpensive destinations, the airfare can far outweigh anything else in the budget, so getting a good airfare is really important. Then, once I have my plane tickets, I build the itinerary, book hotels, etc.

If you want another beautiful and cheap place to visit - consider Bali. Once you get away from the mega resorts in the south, it gets pretty cheap.

mlgb

Look at South America. There are often good airfares to Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru from the US, especially if you are near Miami, New York, or Texas.