When people go on vacation, they tend to believe they are getting their best deal, when they have shopped different hotels, vacation homes, and other venues and found the best advertised price. If you think this way, let me tell you now - in no uncertain terms - you are spending more money than you should have to spend.

Three Questions Designed To Save You Money

1. What is the best price you can give me on this room, or whatever?
2. Is that the best you can do?
3. If the answer is No, repeat questions one and two.

Hotels Need To Fill Rooms

More so in a time of recession, like we are in right now, hotels are desperate to fill rooms. If you are at a hotel with a nearly-packed parking lot, the chances of getting a reduced rate on your hotel room is low. However, if the parking lot at the hotel is less than half full, hotel proprietors are more inclined to jump through hoops to get your business.

Be prepared for the hotel proprietor who is willing to call your bluff. If you tell the person behind the desk that you “will go elsewhere” if they do not cut the price, be prepared to walk out the door if the answer is “No.” More often than not, if your request is met with a “No” at a hotel with few cars in the parking lot, and you start moving towards the door to leave, the hotel proprietor will call you back to the desk, before you reach the front door.

If the parking lot is full, chances are good that the hotel proprietor will not give you a better deal, even if you ask and threaten to leave.

The truth is that you don’t even need to threaten to leave, in order to secure a better deal. All you need to do is to simply ask. What is the best price you can give me on that room? And, is that the best you can do?

Is that the best you can do, is a very important question. This is the question that determines what the lowest price really is. The worst that can happen is that you don’t get a discount price… That is why you should never threaten to leave, unless you have every intention of carrying out that threat.

Better Deals Do Not Always Mean Lower Prices

Suppose your hotel proprietor is willing to give you a free breakfast, if you pay the full price on the room. Breakfast for five at McDonald’s generally costs me $15-$20. So a free breakfast meal for staying at one particular hotel still adds up to money saved, so sometimes, full price for a hotel room will save me money.

One of the best lines in my book of tricks is to wait until the transaction is done, then ask for my “breakfast ticket”. Almost universally, the hotel clerk will ask me “what breakfast ticket?” When I respond, I tell the clerk that I always get tickets for a free breakfast when I stay at other hotels. Nine times out of ten, the desk clerk will say “Oh, okay,” and pull a breakfast ticket from under their desk. Free breakfast is good enough for me.

If you are on vacation, as opposed to a business trip, your hotel may have discount coupons available for local attractions. If you are looking to visit a specific attraction, don’t be afraid to ask if your hotel has discount tickets available for that attraction. You might be surprised what you hotel might be able to offer to you.

Vacation Homes

Vacation Home owners are also feeling the pinch of the recession. As such, you should not be afraid or intimidated at having to ask a vacation home owner if you can get a discount or better rental rate.

Personally, after I discovered vacation home rentals, I decided that if I could afford to go on a vacation, I could also afford to rent a vacation home instead of renting a hotel room. Hands down, the vacation home rental industry offers far more value than any hotel chain could think to offer their customers.

God Gave You The Ability To Speak And Ask Questions - Don’t Be Afraid To Ask

On March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States was inaugurated into office. He entered the presidency during the midst of a banking panic. In his inaugural speech, he spoke the words he is most famous for today, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

FDR’s words of wisdom are as relevant today, as they were when they were spoken in 1933. The only thing you have to fear from asking questions of hotel proprietors or other attraction venue operators is fear itself. So long as you don’t make the mistake of trying to strengthen your question with a threat, you have nothing to fear and money to gain, simply by asking three really easy and simple questions.

I cannot reiterate this point enough… Don’t be afraid to ask for a better price or a better deal. As Ben Franklin was so fond of saying, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

Difficult financial times force people to worry about family finances, often forcing individuals to decide against and forego family vacations. The fear of tomorrow is understandable, but many of us have saved money for more than a year, in hopes of taking our next vacation. During a recession, many of your neighbors are thinking just as you are – hording money and saving for that rainy day that might come next week, next month, or never.

Now here is the key to why you might want to consider recession travel. Your neighbors are worried about the future, same as you are. Your friends are worried about the future. Your neighbors’ friends are worried about the future. It is said that the average person knows 300 people, and that each of those people know 300 different people. 300 times 300 equals 90,000. Through the people you know and the people they know, there are 90,000 people worried about the future. So people are not traveling; instead, people are staying at home and sheltering their savings.

During good times, hotels enjoy 95%-98% occupancy rates. During the current recession, many hotels are struggling to stay afloat with 60%-65% occupancy rates. Airline companies face the same types of challenges. So long as hotels are struggling to keep renters in their rooms, travel bargains will be available to all comers who understand how to find those bargains.

In this article, we will show you how to acquire those bargain travel deals, when traveling requires an airplane ride to reach your vacation destination. In part one of this series, we examined how to find travel bargains, when your travel desires let you reach your desired destination by way of car. You can read part one of this series at: http://www.shoppingtraveldeals.com/blog/2008/11/19/recession-travel-by-car/

Tis The Season

The calendar dictates prices at major tourist destinations. Just as we have always known that gasoline prices are higher at the pump during summer months, other prices are also dictated by consumer demand.

• Most amusement parks remain open only during those summer months, defined as Memorial Day to Labor Day – dictated primarily by local school “summer breaks”.
• Ski resorts charge the highest rates, when they can be certain that there will be snow on the ground (December to mid-March).
• During the off-season, most people only take short weekend vacations, which ensures that prices will always be higher between Friday evening and Sunday night, for air travel and hotel rooms at prime travel destinations.
• Certain yearly events will dictate higher prices on event weeks or weekends, such as NASCAR races, baseball, basketball, and football playoffs and championships, and college rivalry games.

During high-demand dates, hotel and airfare can be quite expensive. What most people fail to realize is that by scheduling a trip even a single day out of season, then the prices can fall by as much as 50%. For example:

• Those amusement parks who open early or stay late tend to offer lower prices during the pre- or post-summer season.
• Let your kids miss a few days of school in the middle of September or in early May, and you can get a family vacation that will permit you to get the same value for half the money. One year, I pulled my kids out of school for a Thursday and Friday, so that we could take a four-day vacation, on a tight budget, during early March. South Texas two weeks before Spring Break offered a lot of value at much lower prices.
• Pick a ski resort that has its own snowmaking machines, and schedule a ski trip before December or after the middle of March to save money.
• Instead of taking a weekend to visit Las Vegas, schedule a stay to run from Monday to Thursday.
• Arrive at a NASCAR race city, on the Tuesday following the race.

Going To Disney With The Kids?

Wal-Mart and other Main Street American stores sell Disney t-shirts and gifts, for much less money than Disney sells them at their parks. Buy the t-shirt before you go, and give it to your kids after you get to the park.

The largest amount of discretionary money spent on vacation will be the knick-knacks, collectibles and gifts purchased at your destination. It does not matter whether you are heading to Disney, Chicago, New York City or the mountains of New Mexico. If Wal-Mart does not have the gifts you are seeking, you can buy most anything on the Internet. You can save a lot of money by buying your gifts before you leave.

Travel Light And Travel Smart

In 2008, airlines started charging extra fees for extra bags. Even if traveling by car, less weight and fewer items will make your trip less expensive and more fun. My wife and I simply took too many bags on our honeymoon. We took a number of heavy books with us, to ensure we had something to read on our journeys, but we only cracked open two of those books the entire week.

Plan Ahead To Avoid Additional Transportation Costs

Wherever you land, one of the most costly expenses you may face will be a taxicab. But, you have to find a way from the airport to your hotel, don’t you?

When you schedule your hotel, it is wise to ask whether the hotel offers transportation to and from the airport. Many do, and if they do, you can save a lot of money by avoiding the taxicab costs.

Even if your hotel does not offer transportation to and from the airport, there are frequently airport buses running between the airport and several nearby hotels. Buses tend to be a lot cheaper than cabs.

Even if you are spending time in Las Vegas, the city provides a bus service to carry patrons the full distance of the Las Vegas Strip. With buses running about every thirty minutes, if you can take the time to wait for the next bus, it is considerably cheaper than a taxi.

Get Out The Calculator And Compare Offers

Hotels, casinos, trains and airlines have lots of people who work in marketing, whose only job is to figure out how to get new customers. Towards that end, many specials are created to attract new customers to the business. But, you really need to put all special offers to the test. Get out your calculator to see how special that “special” really is.

Put the pen to paper and calculate exactly how much those “specials” are really going to cost. The difference between discount-offers and specials offered at various travel destinations, even different offers at the same destination and the same business, could cost as much as several hundred dollars different. Get the facts, and make a good shopping decision.

The Economy of Finances On Foreign Soil

As you may already know, different banks charge different fees to use Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs). But what you may not know is that when you use your Debit Card overseas, ATM fees can be very high, since those debit cards are pulling information from foreign banks. However, few people actually realize that one can obtain no-fee ATM cards for overseas travel. When you travel overseas, it is usually those simple things that can save you the most money.

In previous years, travel to Europe was very attractive for Americans due to the strong dollar against the Euro. These days, the U.S. Dollar has been weakened against the Euro, making travel to Europe more expensive for Americans. While America is in the throws of a new recession, and the news constantly reminds us about the weakness of the dollar overseas, it is easy to assume that we don’t have any real buying power in foreign countries. But there is good news on this front that few have shared.

The U.S. Dollar might be weak against the Euro, but there are several European countries that do not participate in the Euro monetary system. Of those countries, four of them have currency that is still weaker than the dollar: Switzerland, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. As a result, these four countries still present Americans with real value for their money. Other countries where the dollar is still strong include: Argentina, Jamaica, Barbados and Jordan.

Emailed Special Offers

There are several companies that offer special travel deals to their subscribers, through an email alert system or an email newsletter. Some of the best deals in travel can be acquired through these mailing lists, if you are willing to keep your options open and to keep an eye for a great deal.

Many of the deals that the newsletters offer are limited time offers, available only to a few people. Once the offer is sold out, then it is gone, until the next travel offer comes along. Rather than to try to document all of the mailing lists here, I have provided links to the travel mailing lists here: http://www.shoppingtraveldeals.com/blog/email-travel-offers/

Getting The Best Prices On Air Travel

I could actually build an entire article on this subject alone, but I am going to summarize the top two tips here:

• You should never buy air travel tickets directly from the airline company. They sell all tickets at full price and offer the same tickets at substantial discounts to travel companies. Take advantage of this loophole in the airline companies’ standard operating procedure.
• Travel agencies frequently recommend a two-leg airplane route, because it is frequently cheaper to fly into a specific city from only one or two cities. Sometimes a flight to Salt Lake City, Utah and then to Las Vegas, Nevada is cheaper than a direct flight to Las Vegas. Many trips can be arranged in this manner to chop hundreds of dollars off of the cost of reaching a particular destination.

In Conclusion…

For any traveler willing to spend some blood-sweat learning about what may be available and what to do to save money, there is a multitude of inexpensive ways to take advantage of the current economic market to get great travel deals. Visit our website to find more great advice and tips for travelers.

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