Traveling, everybody dreams of it but it’s easy to find excuses not to do it.  It’s time to stop dreaming and just find your adventure!

Well now where do we start?

There are several things to take into consideration along with important details to factor in when planning a trip.

WHERE

Your dream destination is obviously the main question and finding the answer will get the ball rolling on your trip planning. Do you want to go overseas or somewhere closer? Planning a month long European vacation will require quite a bit more planning than a weekend in New York City.

WHEN

When do you want to go? This is a very important thing to figure out as it will definitely affect the price tag of your trip. Can you flexible with the dates?

If you are looking to save big bucks on flights, you might have to be a little bit.

If you want to go during the summer, are you ok with going in early June instead of mid July? Can you leave on a Tuesday instead of Friday? Even minor adjustments will affect the overall costs. Obviously Mid Summer, March break and Christmas are more expensive periods to travel, however if you are a little flexible on the dates, you might still be able to get a decent price on your flight. The same goes for accommodations, I will delve into that further in an upcoming post.

I can suggest two very good tools to help you look up flights, Google Flights and an app called Hopper.

GOOGLE FLIGHT

Google Flights has a very handy price graph that will show you the price range for the time frame you are looking for. You can easily select if you want a direct flight or you can play with the dates to see the price difference.  It will show you all the airlines that are operating on the route and direct you to the airline’s website if you wish to book.

HOOPER

Hopper is similar to Google Flights (minus the price graph) but the good thing about it is that you can follow a “trip”. Let’s say you do a search for a Toronto-Dublin round trip flight.  For your selected dates, the price is $650. The app will then tell you if you should wait, if this is average or if you should book it because it is less expensive than usual. If you decide to wait, you can follow the “trip” and the app will notify you if there are changes. It will tell you to book if it’s the cheapest it’s been in a while or to wait a little longer.

AIRLINE WEBSITE

I would also recommend to go on the airlines website once in a while and do some research, just to get an idea and a sense of their price range.  Additionally they do sometimes have really amazing flash sales.

As an example, I once booked two flights from Toronto to Los Angeles for a total of $506 tax included. Unbelievable deal for two round trip flights! That’s what you would normally pay for a single round trip ticket. I also flew to Iceland for $350 round trip with Icelandair (this was a direct flight with checked baggage included). That price was even cheaper than WOW Air, which used to be the Icelandic low-cost carrier.

I recently saw some Ireland bound flights departing from Toronto for less than $400 round trip on Aer Lingus. You never know what deals are out there, so stay persistent, do your homework, and you could get lucky with one of these bargains.

REWARDS PROGRAMS

Something to get the most out of your travel consider enrolling in the many rewards programs offered by airlines, credit cards, and others. Do you collect Aeroplan or Air Miles? It may take some time but they do pay off if your collenting points each step of the way. Both rewards programs websites are fairly easy to navigate and you will be able to see how many points are needed to go to your selected destination. It will also tell you if there is a high season and low season. Maybe you have a free flight waiting for you but it is only for the low season. Are you willing to adjust your dates to take advantage of it? The number of points required per flight will also be based on your destination. Are you game to change your destination to take advantage of the points?

FEAR OF FLYING?

If you don’t like to fly or just prefer to use other method of transportation, there are still plenty of option. For us here in Canada, Via Rail is quite relaxing and they do offer very competitive prices (for local travel). They often have sales and if you book on Tuesdays, you will definitely save a few bucks.

Megabus is another option for terrestrial transportation. If you don’t mind the overnight drive (mostly if you are looking into going to the United States), they have good deals.

If you have a driver’s licence and you like to drive singing Tom Cochrane’s hit “Life is a Highway”, go ahead and rent a car. The best bet would for sure be bargain websites like Priceline and Hotwire. If you book in advance you can get cars for as low as $20 per day. Can’t really beat that. Note that in order to get an even lower price, you might want to play a little bit with the pick up location as it is sometime more expensive to rent a car in the downtown core. However, with luck and a little bit of advance booking, you might be able to get the same prices downtown.

LET’S DO IT

Now that you have an idea, just go ahead and plan your own adventure. Once your travel arrangements are booked, it makes it way easier to start looking into accommodation, planning sightseeing and activities. It all start from somewhere and that place is with some set dates and a destination!