For most of us, Airfare is still the most expensive part of our adventures. We’ve all spent those frustrating hours hunting for the best deal and been disappointed when all our efforts with more expensive tickets than when we started. Here are two simple tricks to ease your airfare woes and get the most out of your flight budget.
Use Private Browsing to throw the airlines off your tracks
Airlines have brilliant marketing departments dedicated to getting you to pay as much as possible for a given flight. That brings us to our first airline marketing theory:
“The more a traveler searches for a flight, the more they want or need that ticket”
Those shrewd marketers have figured out that by leaving tracking cookies behind when you search for flights so they can build up a pattern of what flights you’ve been searching for.
So if you search for a flight multiple times, you may find that the prices have increased quite suddenly due to the airline trying to get a few extra dollars for that flight they know you need to be on.
Taking a moment to clear your browser history or using your browsers “Private Browsing” mode can help prevent the airlines’ websites from establishing that pattern in the first place. As with many tricks of the trade your mileage may vary, but its free and it certainly won’t do any harm.
Use a VPN to buy flights like a local
Those same airline marketing people also figured out another thing about us. As with failing to haggle over a rug in a Moroccan Market, we don’t know what things should cost when were abroad. That brings us to airline marketing theory number 2:
“Someone on vacation will pay far more for a flight than a local.”
So how do you buy flights from Luton to Liverpool or Marrakesh to Madrid like a local without ever leaving home? While few of us can blend in effectively when we travel, our computers certainly can.
Some of you may be familiar with using a VPN to keep your browsing safe and secure while you’re on the road. If you aren’t, read this article on why you should be using a VPN and how to set one up.
There is another great way you can leverage your VPN before you ever leave home. Based on airline theory #2, we know that our best chances of getting a cheap flight are by looking like a local buyer. Most VPN software offers the ability to choose where you appear to be to the rest of the internet so we can prevent airlines from gouging us with tourist prices. For this tip I do have an example!
This June, we are travelling to Australia and New Zealand. More to come on that soon! During our trip, we need to fly from Sydney to Auckland.
First we see the available flights and pricing without the VPN on Air New Zealand’s US website:
$272.00 USD for economy including a checked bag.
Now let’s take a look at the same search using a VPN. First, be sure to use private browsing mode to prevent the website from being tipped off by your cookies and browsing data. Then we’ll setup our VPN to show us as being in Australia.
$269.00 AUD for an equivalent fare on their Australia website.
Factoring in the current exchange rate, that’s $190.41USD. We put in United States as our county of citizenship and that we had US passports and still got the same pricing. A savings of $82 or over 30% per person!
So long as you have a travel card that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees it costs you nothing to take advantage of the best possible pricing.
Next time your hunting for flights, add these two tips to your strategy to save even more!
Two to Travel 