Traveling is one of the best things to do when you have a lot of free time, especially on a long holiday. Even in your own city, area or country, you can’t say that you’ve seen or done everything since there are always new things to see and experience everyday. The world is a big and beautiful place, and you’ll never run out of things to explore.
To travel is to immerse yourself in new opportunities and learnings, and people who love to travel can never recommend it enough. If you’re excited to travel but you’re short on the budget, here are some tips you might find useful to find cheap travel accommodation:
1. Be a Local Tourist
One of the best ways to find cheap travel accommodations is to be a tourist in your own area or country. Regardless of where you’re from, there are always new things to see and tourist developments you can visit.
Some tourist spots offer different cheaper and special rates to locals than to foreigners. Here are some tips to finding a new place to visit in your area:
- Follow local tourism or local government social media pages
- Check out local blogs by native bloggers
- Follow social media pages of local hotels and resorts for announcements on special discounts for residents. If you’re from Costa Rica, you can check out Costa Rica Beach Resorts Facebook fan pages.
- Ask neighbors for recommendations. If there are special rates for any establishment in your area, they would know it for sure.
- Look for government-owned accommodations in your area. They are often the cheapest.
2. Know the Language
If you’re planning to travel out of the country, one of the things that would immensely help you in finding cheap travel accommodations is knowing the local language. You don’t have to go all-out and become a linguistics expert or be at the level of a local speaker; you just need to know essential phrases and words.
Here are some of the reasons how speaking the local tongue could help you find affordable accommodations:
- You can ask Locals for Advice
There are a lot of English-speaking countries in the world; however, not everyone can speak that language. You can be more comfortable talking to locals like food vendors or random persons on the street for advice on where to find affordable accommodations.
- You can understand signages and local promotions
There are many brochures, signages and promotions in an area but most of them are often in the local language. If you are fluent in their language, you can easily spot a discount for an accommodation.
3. Take Advantage of Marketing and Promotion Efforts
Most hotels, clubs and resorts have loyalty programs like coupons, discounts and other promotions. Their marketing teams come up with programs to encourage people to stay with them, and you can take advantage of those in your next trip.
Here are some of the reasons why you get affordable accommodations in loyalty programs:
- Affiliate discounts and promotions
Affiliates are partner establishments or businesses. If you’re a fan of airline promotions, you should also be aware that these airlines often have affiliate accommodations. For example, you have booked a flight to a country, their airline could suggest discounts and promotions on their partner hotels or resorts.
- Accumulated points
Some accommodations may have points and rewards as part of their loyalty program, and these may be convertible as cash discounts. Having a membership card to a certain hotel chain may be beneficial especially if the hotel has a branch in the area you’re traveling to.
- Special loyalty rewards and member rates
A lot of promotions for accommodations include special rates for members and repeated purchase. For example, a hotel could give you 50% discount after 5 days of accumulated stay or there could be an additional free night stay in a member’s birthday month. Check out their brochures or social media pages for the latest promos.
4. Use Travel Mobile Applications
Businesses have learned to take their company to the various digital platforms.
There are currently a lot of mobile applications available nowadays and they have a lot of different ways to help you find cheap accommodations. Here are some of the ways that mobile apps can assist you:
- Airline mobile apps can offer discounted rates to members
- Travel mobile apps allow you to search tourist spots, hotels and resorts according to location and price range
- Hotel booking mobile apps can offer special discount as a reward for downloading the app
- Hotel booking mobile apps offer mobile only discount
Final Thoughts
Traveling doesn’t have to be expensive. There are many creative ways to cut costs, and those methods are often found in the places you least expect them. When you cut costs on your travel accommodations, you can do more things during your trip like visit more stores or buy more souvenirs for your loved ones.
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