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.

In economic boom times, hotels typically have 95%-98% occupancy rates. When hotels are running at such capacity, the hotel’s management is fat and happy with profits.

But in recessionary periods like we are experiencing right now, hotels find occupancy rates running at 60%-65%, making it hard for the hotel’s management to make ends meet.

Hotels make money when they can fill their rooms, with paying customers. When running at 95%-98% occupancy rates, filling those final rooms are pure gravy on the hotel’s bottom line. With high occupancy rates, hotels tend to hold empty rooms for people desperate for a room, enabling the hotel to maximize its profits.

But when occupancy rates are low, hotel managers are desperate for customers instead of customers being desperate for a room. Herein lies the secret to getting more bang for your travel dollars.

Full rooms are a sellers’ market, and empty rooms create a buyers’ market. When in a buyers’ market, the buyer has a lot of control over the final price the customer will pay.

If you go to the front desk of the hotel and demonstrate to the satisfaction of the hotel proprietor that you may be willing to walk out the front door of the hotel and shop for another room, then you will have strengthened your hand for negotiating a better price for a room. My experience has been that many hotel proprietors believe that if you are standing in their lobby that you are more inclined to buy from them, rather than to go down the street, so the proprietor will hold more firm on his or her price. However, if you are willing to call the hotel on the phone - even from the hotel’s parking lot - you will find that you have a lot more leverage to get a better deal.

The simple truth is that if hotel’s are struggling to fill rooms, hotel proprietors are more often willing to negotiate a better deal, with any person willing to ask. So ask.

Not every hotel proprietor will be willing to reduce the price of a room, but frequently, proprietors who reject a lower price will offer extra amenities to sweeten the deal. So ask.

You have nothing to lose by asking, and you could very well negotiate a much better deal if you would only be willing to ask for a better deal. So speak up, and see if you can find a better deal.