- Hey everyone, how you do?
It's Sunday which means it's time for another episode
of Gunnarolla University.
Synchronizerman wants to know about how to plan a
trip abroad if you're on a budget?
Well, there are tons of steps involved in planning
a trip, but in today's lesson I wanted to focus on
booking flights and how I use Google to
find the best fares.
Class is in session.
First of all, time for a paradigm shift.
Don't tell yourself you're looking for the
cheapest fare, you're looking for the best available
fare that you are comfortable paying.
With the exception of Budget Airlines and
low cost carriers, which tend to have more fixed pricing,
when it comes to major airlines, the price of flying can
fluctuate so much that it's almost impossible
to know when you'll get the absolute cheapest price.
That being said, there are optimal times to
book your flight.
A study by Cheapair.com, which I'll link to in
the description box below,
found that 21 to 105 days before you have to leave
is the prime booking window where you'll find
the best fares for a flight.
There is no such thing as a last minute day of deal,
so make sure you organize, because booking your
flights last minute is not a good idea.
Now when it comes to when you should fly,
historically speaking, mid-week, that's Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, generally have lower fares
than a Friday, Sunday, or Monday departure when
you'll find more business and vacation travel.
If you know where you're going, you might also
want to research when the low season or the
rainy season is, although it's always a rainy season
when I'm involved.
Again, these are general tips but a good starting point
when you're researching flights.
So, how do you go about finding the best fare
when there are so many different airlines?
Well, there are basically three ways to do this.
You can book through a travel agent, they're usually
very knowledgeable and might have access to whole sale
deals that you won't find online.
Or if you wanna have more control, you can book
the flight yourself by doing research online.
You can do it through a third party booking website,
like Expedia or Priceline.
These sites will allow you to compare different airlines,
buy package deals, and make your bookings through the site.
Or if you're like me and you want full control
and you'd rather make your booking directly with
the airline, you can use a flight aggregator like
Skyscanner or
Google flights.
I love Google flights.
It's got everything you need and a really easy to use
interface, it's the perfect tool for
research and discovery.
Unlike other Google owned websites.
Let's say that you know your destination, but
your dates are flexible and you want to find the best fare.
Well, you put in your destination and if you look
in the calendar, you can see how much the flight
will cost if you were to book today.
On the other hand, if you know the dates you can
travel but you don't know where you wanna go, just
put the dates in and Google flights will
suggest some destinations.
You can even filter your results based on the
type of travel you wanna do, the number of stopovers,
your price range, or the airline you wanna fly with.
If you collect loyalty points, as you should.
Keep in mind that a lower price usually involves
fare restrictions and connections, which means
a longer travel time.
If you're not in a rush to book, you can set up
an email alert and Google flights will let
you know if the price changes.
Once you found a price that you're okay with, Google
can take you directly to the airline's website
to complete the booking.
There are some other great resources for tracking
flights and finding flight deals.
Hopper is a really great mobile app that does a lot
of the things that Google flights can do.
It can track flights, offer predictions, and it has
hotel bookings, and there are a ton of websites
out there that keep track of really cheap deals
and mistake fares and I'll link to them in
the description box below.
If you're in Canada, you need to follow nextdeparture.ca,
they're posting tons of deals all the time.
Now,
once you booked your flight, keep an eye on it
for the next 24 hours.
Most major airlines will allow you to cancel
without any penalty 24 hours after you book a flight.
If the fare doesn't change in that time, my number one
tip is
to close your browser window and never check again.
The price might go down, it might go up.
But after 24 hours, there's not much you can do,
so I don't think it's worth knowing.
So, those are just some tips for finding good flight deals.
If you have any of your own, let us know in the
comments below, and if there's anything you wanna learn
in an upcoming class, let me know.
I'll see ya next time.
A la prochaine!