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When you can get low-cost plane tickets or a free hotel stay through a promotion, it is a huge luck. However, you can’t control it. And obviously, you never want to overpay. Check our travel tricks that might help you save money. Let’s dive in!

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#1. Travel in the low season
Find out what the busiest time of year is for your destination and plan your trip accordingly. For instance, avoid visiting Spanish beaches in August when the locals are on holiday. Thus you’ll see only three-layer crowds on the beaches and high prices for hotels. On the Balearic Islands, the weather is still resort-like in September, but there are a lot less visitors and much lower transport expenses.
#2. Use public transport or rent a car
You will be surprised, but even car rental is much cheaper than a city taxi. Especially when a taxi driver sees that you are a tourist, he obviously won’t offer a low price.
Car rental services like evolve.ae offer reasonable fees. As a nice bonus – you will not be limited in movement, you will not crowd in a stuffy bus and you will be able to visit many locations in one day and at a time when there are not so many tourists near them thanks to the hired car.
#3. Don’t go for tourist spots
Choose alternative little-known spots: Alanya instead of Istanbul, Avignon instead of Paris, Bronx rather than Manhattan – go to less popular places to stay. A well-known city, resort, beach, or location won’t be just better than the neighboring one, but it will undoubtedly cost more.
#4. Make bargain your life and death struggle
Avoid purchasing souvenirs near attractions and in busy tourist districts. Rather go to the neighborhood bazaar or flea market and try not to show you’re a tourist. To avoid overpaying many times merely because you are a foreigner, find out the estimated prices in advance from the locals and bargain, bargain and bargain…
Abandon this idea at all if your budget is tight. The most valuable memories you can bring home from any trip are your photos and stories. You may print and customize postcards from your own photos for relatives and friends and this will appear to be more valuable for them.
#5. Chat with locals
Feel free to communicate with the locals. Market vendors, attendants at gas stations, and baristas at coffee shops will be pleased to share their knowledge about where you may eat local food on a budget, where to go to see the sunrise, and how to cut costs on transportation to attractions. In a foreign nation, you won’t find the greatest guides since the locals hold this culture inside themselves. So it’s doubtful that you will learn more about their culture on a group trip than what is described on Wikipedia.

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What not to save on when traveling
And a couple of points about what you should not save on:
- Insurance – life and health are more important than money
- Food – you can eat cheaply, but, most importantly, don’t go too far: in cheap roadside eateries,you won’t always find fresh food or sanitary standards. Spoiling your vacation by lying around with poisoning in a hotel is hardly a pleasant prospect.
- Safety – there was once a case in Thailand when tourists wanted to save money on a taxi and the two of them got on a bike. The Thai driver doesn’t care, but the tourist who was sitting in the back and fell off the bike was not happy.
The main thing is to understand that there is no golden recipe for saving. You need to try to find a middle ground in terms of price/quality ratio in what you really need. Good luck while traveling!