If possible, I like to book my own holidays from beginning to end. Two factors lead to significant costs on any holiday, flights and hotel. More often than not flights cost more than hotels. I feel like I have won a lottery when I find a cheap flight on my own. My Maldives and Sri Lanka trips happened because I could book cheap flights on my own! I got 15K return both for Colombo and Male. Planning the rest was easy.
And that is why I love budget airlines. It doesn’t matter who they are, it could be Indigo Flights or SpiceJet for that matter, and they all are the same to me. When I am booking it on my own I look for the cheapest tickets. Recently I discovered it is possible to find cheap international flights from Jaipur and Lucknow too.
However, there have been occasions when I could not find a cheap flight on my own. The most recent incident is Prague. I wanted to book the entire holiday on my own, it was easy to find hotels in my budget but the flights eluded me. I actually found a cheap flight with flydubai but the layover was such that I gave up, I could in no way deal with a long transit with two children!
When I can’t find cheap flight tickets on my own , I turn to online travel portals which sell holidays as a last resort. They can often give cheaper prices because they book in bulk and hence transfer the benefit to us. That is how I did Prague, by booking the flight and hotel with an online provider and doing everything else on our own.
So what are your suggestions for booking a cheap flight? I know I can’t match people booking one year in advance but I am sure everyone has their favorite way of getting it!
I have found that keeping dates options flexible gives better rates… Also odd hour flights are cheaper in my opinion…
Thanks Prasad, next time I am certainly going to try the flexible dates option!
I am collecting all this type of information for my first trip to abroad but cant say when this day will come .
It will come, I am sure sooner rather than later!
I have never used online portals to book flight+accommodation, but might try it out if I get a good deal. Many times when you travel you spend most of your time outside the hotel so all you really need is a comfortable, clean room.
I realized they give us better deals if it is closer to the trip as they do bulk booking and don’t get affected as much as we do!
Great tips!
Thank you Sindhu!
A lot of times we try to keep the dates flexible but even if that doesnt help us finding cheaper tickets we head to the online travel portals. They do offer some great deals.
I agree, if I can’t find things on my own portals my go to place 😀