Planning the Summer Vacation
Josh and I just finished making our reservations and booking our air travel for our honeymoon this June. This got me thinking about vacation planning - something that needs as much attention to detail, when it comes to laying out your budget and expenditures, as any other major purchase. Starting early, in my opinion, is the best and easiest way to take the trip you want to take without too much strain to your bank account.
I recently read an article on CNN Money that offers 5 tips for kicking off the planning process. Here are some highlights, with my own interjections:
1) Research Airfare. This could quite possibly be the most time consuming element of planning the best trip. I am notoriously obsessive-compulsive when it comes to finding the best fare to get where I want to go. For me, it's become a little like playing the market - I've figured out when the prices are likely to be low and when they are likely to skyrocket - and plan to buy my airfare accordingly.
I always start off on one of the online agencies - like Expedia or Orbitz - to see where the fares are hovering. However, I accumulate the majority of my miles on American Airlines - not to mention having an AAdvantage Credit Card that also accrues miles - so what I really want to do is find the best fare possible for that airline. I also should point out - even if you see a low fare for your preferred airline on Expedia, it is most likely lower on the airlines website - so take the time to check both.
Next - consider your payment options. For our Honeymoon, I bought my ticket with my AA miles - and we bought Josh's ticket separately. AA is great for this, because you can log in, if you have an AAdvantage #, and hold your reservation without buying it. Thus, you can pick out both of the tickets, hold them to lock in the reservation, then choose your seats, and then purchase them separately without risking not being able to sit together or having to take separate flights.
Another tip is to be thorough - check the one-way fares to and from your destination, as well as the round-trip - sometimes the combined total is less!
2) Get there. According to Bestfares.com, airfare will rise a total of 10% this year from last summer - so booking early (at least two months in advance) is key. However, you may also want to expand your options, especially if you're not privy to one airline in particular - discount airlines (JetBlue, Ted, Southwest, AirTran, etc) are popping up everywhere, and they're expanding their routes all the time.
3) Rent a vacation home. Honestly, sometimes this is the best way to go. You can get so much more bang for your buck renting someone's vacation house, and have more privacy than staying in a big, overcrowded hotel. Hotel rates are rising 6% this year, so it's worth checking out. We stayed in a four room condo in Cozumel once a while back, and not only was it an amazing deal, the place was incredible. Plus, you'll have your own kitchen - which is a lot better than a minibar.
Check out OwnerDirect, Vacation Homes, or Vamoose to check out your options.
4) Hotels: Compare and Contrast. In big cities, the average per night hotel rate is up to $200, up 10%. So do some homework - sites like Hotels.com allow you to sort by available hotels by price and location. Also check out my number one FAVORITE travel site: TripAdvisor once you've found that cheap but fantastic hotel on Hotels.com, search it on TripAdvisor to read visitor comments, view personal photos, and get all the nitty-gritty testimonials... then you'll know whether you're getting a real deal or a real dump.
5) Cruisin': Although I don't personally like big cruises, I hear there are great deals to be had by those who do, usually in some form of a vacation package. Again - booking early is the way to go, and for comparison purposes, try www.comparecruises.com.
** One final note: Start setting small amounts of money aside when you can way ahead of time. We started a separate honeymoon account in ING Direct a while ago... and it's just nice to be able to pay for your whole vacation without resorting to racking up the credit card debt!
Bon Voyage, mes amis!
Great tips to save on vacations! I'm especially interested in the vacation rentals. Thanks for the links to those rental sites.
Posted by: George | January 29, 2006 at 06:03 PM