However, for me, travel hacking is an idea. It s a philosophy that says I am going to bring costs as

How to Be a Travel Hacker | Nomadic lets go travel Matt s Travel Site Search lets go travel the site: Stay in touch: Home About Me Travel Tips Travel Blog Destination Guides Travel Videos Books + Resources Contact Tweet How to Be a Travel Hacker
Travel hackers are the people constantly chasing miles, lets go travel rewards points, and elite status. They are looking for every possible lets go travel way to game the system for as much free travel as they can. Most travel hacking is about using miles and rewards to get free flights or hotels . True travel hackers will do anything to get points and miles. Need to take 16 flights in 30 days to get a certain elite mileage status? No problem. Get triple miles on a new route? I'll fly it tomorrow. Sign up for this card, fill out this form, or enter this contest to get 5,000 hotel points? Easy. It is like that scene in Up in the Air , where the main character says, I don t do anything if it doesn t benefit my mileage account.
However, for me, travel hacking is an idea. It s a philosophy that says I am going to bring costs as close to zero as possible. Since only the die-hards (like myself) really lets go travel want to spend hours and hours putting together lets go travel mileage routes that might get them 100 extra miles or read the fine print to find a loophole they can exploit, I ve put together this guide for the casual traveler who still wants to travel cheap, but who might not have the time nor the desire to be a black-belt-level ninja: How to Hack to A Flight
Since flights are usually the most expensive part of any trip, I thought I d deal with this subject first. Finding a cheap flight is easier said than done these days. Routes and capacity have been cut and oil prices have risen. The combination of all three has lead to higher fares that are only going up. Flexibility is key to finding cheap flights, as deals are sometimes lets go travel around for only a few hours. A day can mean the difference of hundreds of dollars. But if you need flights on a certain date, then you need to work the system a bit.
Let's look at an example. Say I am flying lets go travel from New York City to London. This is a popular route, and is served by a lot of airlines. I picked the date October 17th with a return date of October 27th.
Step 1: Use a site like Kayak as your baseline. lets go travel They search multiple websites at once so you can see prices across the board. Moreover, I also like how they let you search a few days before and after your selected date. In the US, I also like Travelocity , but there are tons of good aggregators around the world.
Step 2: Cross check with other, more global aggregators like Skyscanner , or Momondo to see what they come up with. These two are my favorite as they tend to search a wider range of booking sites as well as discount airline lets go travel carriers. I never book a flight without checking these sites first. (Two other good ones are Mobissimo and Vayama .)
Step 3: Find the lowest fare and head to that airline's website to see if it is less. Sometimes airlines price tickets less on their own websites than they do on aggregators as a way to entice people to book directly. As we see above, the lowest lets go travel fare is $592.19 USD on a low-cost lets go travel airline called Mandarin Airlines (actually, lets go travel when you click the link it sends you to Astraeus Airline) with Iceland Express next at $676 USD. I couldn t find a booking form on Astraeus (they are a charter lets go travel operation lets go travel partially owned by Iceland Air) but checking on the Iceland Express website, we see the price is the same:
Step 4: Next, check the airline's foreign website to see if the price is cheaper in another currency. (i.e. britishairways.co.uk lets go travel instead of britishairways.com) Depending on your currency, you might be able to take advantage of the exchange rate and book in another currency lets go travel while getting charged in your own currency, thereby saving money. On our example, this doesn t work because we are going from the United States to England and the English Pound is worth more than the US dollar.However, if we were going the reverse way, this would work. I ve used this method when flying to New Zealand since their currency is worth less than the US currency. Recently, a bunch of people used a loophole where they could buy Iceland Air points in Krona and transfer those to Alaskan Airways, then use those points and end up with a first class ticket to Hawaii for $300 USD!
Step 5: Try various routes. Most major airports have expensive fees and taxes that can add a lot of money to the price of a ticket. I like to check other big airports lets go travel and then see if taking a discount flight to my final destination is cheaper. This is especially good in Europe since they have so many airlines. For our example, maybe flying to Dublin is cheaper, and then I can just take a quick Ryanair flight over to London. (Turns out, in our example, it isn t.)
Step 6: See who flys into the airport you want to land at. One thing I do quite a bit is to go to the airport s website and see what airlines fly into it. Sometimes you find small carriers that are not listed on aggregators lets go travel or other search engines. lets go travel This is sort of my last double check to make sure I checked all possible airlines. After all, I don t want to find out later that there was an airline that offered a cheap flight but wasn t listed on an aggregator. (Not all airlines appear on flight search engines.)
After I do all that checking and work, I might look at a few more websites and search for a lot of deals if I ve found big differences between the numbers. Moreover, it is also good to play around with the dates of your trip. Sometimes lets go travel leaving a few days before or after can make a big difference in price. In our example, lets go travel it didn t really make a huge difference when I looked at it. Most of the major airlines were much higher than what we found during that period:
So our $593 USD flight lets go travel to London on Astraeus airline looks to be the best deal and is more than $200 USD cheaper than most of the major airlines and $100 USD cheaper than Iceland Express. Notice that Astreaus only appeared on 1 booking site and that booking site was not US-based. That s why it is so important to check multiple sites from all over the world, because lets go travel not all sites check all airlines. All this work took me about 45 minutes. While $200 USD isn t a lot of money, spending 45 minutes to save $200 USD is worth it for me because that is $200 USD more I now have for my trip!
The second way to fly cheap is to use frequent flier miles. This is the preferred method of travel hackers. There are plenty of ways to get thousands of miles without ever setting foot on a plane, but you have to be willing to put the time and energy into it. However, I found the work to be worth the thousands of dollars in free flights. Here are the major ways to get lots of free miles besides actually flying:
Sign up for a branded airline credit card : Whether you love Delta, fly United and the Star Alliance, live and breathe Jetblue, or are hooked on Oneworld, all U.S. carriers have a branded travel credit card that gives you 25,000-30,000 points when you sign up and make one purchase. That's a free economy ticket right there. Airline credit cards are the best way to kick start your mileage balance. I ve used these cards to collect over 500,000 frequent flier miles. ( Here re my tips on looking lets go travel for a good one .)
Watch out for special promotions : I sign up for all the airline mailing lists. I always watch out for special 2-for-1 mile deals. Or when they have special card offers to earn extra miles. Last year, British Airways offered a card that gave you 100,000 miles just for signing up. That was a first class ticket home. American Airlines just gave me 1,000 miles for watching a demo on their new shopping toolbar. I once got 5,000 miles for joining Netflix. Marriott is giving away Silver status, and Delta recently gave away miles for watching a video about Bose headphones. Promotions help. It s how I fly business class for free most of the time .
Sign up for a non-airline credit card : Sign up for a non-airline credit card like a Starwood American Express card and you can get 10,000 sign-up points. When you convert 20,000 points into miles, you get a 5,000-mile bonus. I highly recommend signing up for this card too but signing up for any points card like the AMEX travel card or a Capital One card will do. Afterwards, you can transfer your sign-up bonus points to the airline you use and redeem them for flights.
Take the AA challenge: If you are taking lets go travel a long trip, go with American Airlines. By paying $300, you can take the 10,000 point challenge. If you accumulate 10,000 points in 3 months, you get 1 year platinum status, lets go travel which gives you automatic upgrades into business class as well as lounge access. They do not advertise this on their website, however. You must call customer service and ask to take the challenge.
Do a mileage lets go travel run: If you are only a few thousand miles away from some form of elite status, you can do what the travel ninjas call a mileage run. This means you find cheap fares or special bonus mileage lets go travel offers lets go travel and take that flight. It can be a weekend lets go travel getaway, a week away, or an afternoon jaunt. I ve known people to fly around the country in 1 day simply to get a huge cache of bonus miles. Yes, you spend a bit of money on the flight, lets go travel but having that elite status for a year will be well worth it.
Buy miles : This isn t actually a way to get a free flight but it s a good way to get a cheap business class flight. Many airlines run special offers where you can get 100% bonus on any miles you buy for up to 100,000 miles. This usually costs around $1,300 USD. However, that amount of miles is enough to go business class somewhere lets go travel in the world so you essentially get a business class ticket at an economy class price.
Note : You will have to sign up for airline frequent flier programs in order to be eligible to redeem miles. lets go travel Most travel hackers sign up for lots of credit cards as they have the largest one time bonuses (think 30,000-50,000 lets go travel miles). Opening credit cards don t necessarily