THE TRAVEL STATUS OF THE DAY: Many of you are asking me how am I posting all these delicious travel deals. Well, because I am actually a pretty cheap and thrifty individual. I am all about saving money and getting a good deal. Everyday I comb through some of the travel deal websites and see if any of these deals work for me. The key to all of this is to be FLEXIBLE. If you have too many restrictions this isn’t going to work for you boo….might as well give up now honey. Here we go…
STEP 1: Anyway, there is a website simply referred as the ITA matrix. ITA matrix is like that boo you should probably marry but he or she might be a little complicated at first….lol…ITA matrix allows you to put in flight plans and research their prices over several time periods. It will also show you airlines to book with and flight paths. You cannot book from the ITA matrix but it is a very good tool to use and there are many tutorials out there. ITA matrix is here:http://matrix.itasoftware.com/
STEP 2:
and plenty others out there but these are enough to make you head spin…DAILY….
STEP 3: A lot of deals will come from cities you don’t live in….so what…figure out how to get to the other fly out city cheaply whether that is megabus, greyhound, Amtrak, Uber, you drive, book a cheap ticket on Southwest or the evil Spirit, etc…JUST BOOK IT…I live 60 miles away from LAX so I just drive it….
STEP 4: If you see a deal you want, do not wait around asking your friends if they want to go…..BOOK DAT ISHT right away. I booked Brazil on Monday for $424..On Wednesday it was $1568. Plus be aware some of these places require a visa but just be prepared to pay that fee…speaking of visas my boy Addison put this website together www.visahunter.com that lets you know what places you need a visa for. Some places you need a visa for before arrival..other places you can get it when you land.
STEP 5: Some of you are flying and not racking up flight points…what is wrong with you??? I just booked a first class ticket to Memphis for February using my points…how much did it cost me.. $5.60 You fly all of these airlines so you might as well get credit for it. Sign up for their program and if you want, sign up for their credit cards (only if you are fiscally responsible). Chase Sapphire Preferred and Barclays Card are killing it out there in the travel game. Also other cards like the American Advantage card plus Delta American Express can be your best friends if you travel a lot.
STEP 6: I wasn’t going to tell you all but I guess I’ll let the monkey out……most of my domestic trips…I DIDN’T PAY FOR THEM…I’ve been everywhere for free..New York, Memphis, etc and I didn’t have to okie dokie with the captain either!!! LOL..seriously, you all know I am the self proclaimed #VoucherQueenand I do believe in giving up my seat on flights so I can get flight credits to fly for free later on. I try this on every flight if I can. Many of you know I’m a hustler…do not let my California zip code fool you. I’m from Memphis baby.
STEP 7: Feel free to ask me questions but I’m going to ask you if you have done your homework i.e. looked at all the websites, looked at the ITA matrix, looked for deals, found ways to get to other cities etc.
STEP 8: Travel is affordable and there are many ways to do this. Cheap hotels/hostels, booking your own itinerary instead of these prepackaged plans, eating the local food, traveling in the low season, etc.
EDIT 1: Stopovers…..ohhh ohhh Kenna I wanna see the world….lol…anyway the stopover lets you see another city for basically either free or for a few dollars more. When I am pricing out tickets for international flights, I typically useskyscanner.com to see who has the cheapest flights then I look at the airlines websites to see can I do a stop over. In October I had a flight from Los Angeles to Johannesburg, South Africa. The stop point was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. What I did was priced out the flight and it was about $1240 or so…then I did the multi city option and put myself in Dubai for 4 days at the tail end of the trip…turned out to be $1268…ended up seeing two countries for the price of one. I’ve done this before doing LAX to India and stopping in London, England before. Earlier this year I did India again but a stop in Germany but I had stuff to do…I have Brazil next year and my stopover is Lima, Peru. You guys need to maximize on this. Another thing I will do is book a ticket somewhere say Los Angeles to Johannesburg then I will book tickets on local carriers for cheap to go other places like Cape Town, Victoria Falls, etc…
EDIT 2: www.google.com/flights is your friend…if you know the dates you can be gone but don’t know where to go, put in your location and leave the destination blank…google flights will show you a lot of flight prices for places you can go. If you are feeling good, click GET LUCKY.
I hope this helps someone today.
EDIT 3: www.jetradar.com is my new lover….finding KILLER DEALS THERE!
EDIT 4: Deals maven is decent… http://dealsmaven.com/
EDIT 4: The Points Guy put out the 10 best cheap airfare sites and I am happy to know I’ve used all of them! http://thepointsguy.com/2014/
EDIT 5: Travel Pirates is new to me but the deals seem to be goodwww.travelpirates.com/flights
EDIT 6: Discovered this one called www.hopper.com however to get deals from your city, add in your airport code, this one is mine: http://www.hopper.com/deals/
EDIT 7: This isn’t necessarily new information but it’s something I actually just did….I just bought a plane ticket from IGU to GIG. All the typical websites showed the fare at $230. I put this on google flights and it showed me $106 and a link to the TAM Brazilian website. I booked it in Brazilian Reals…saved $124……not bad…
EDIT 8: Many of the deal sites find the deals from this specific forum on FlyerTalk: http://www.flyertalk.com/
When you feel confident that you’re following on, move on to Mileage Run Discussion. It contains expired deals only, but once you start studying them you see patterns on how people are finding these things. TREAD CAREFULLY. This is a mean group that’s not welcoming of newbie questions AT ALL. They expect you to read everything, follow their format for posts, and utilize the search tool. If you thought people in the tribe were mean about newbies not using the search tool or repeat questions you ain’t seen nothing yet.
EDIT 9: www.holidaypirates.com/flights is dangerous as hell…..whew chile….best for those in Europe.