Travel expert reveals how booking a ‘wonky weekend’ holiday break can save you money
A TRAVEL expert has revealed how holidaymakers can save money on weekend trips, without eating into their holiday allowance.
Most people know that booking trips during the week is cheaper than travelling at the weekend, but this can eat up all your holiday days at work.
However, there are ways to travel at the weekend and still save a bit of money.
Cody Candee, CEO of Travel specialists Bounce explained how people can use the “wonky weekend” method to cut down on prices.
This involves travelling from Saturday to Monday, instead of the much more common Friday to Sunday.
By shifting your trip by just one day, you could end up saving a lot of money.
He said: “It is commonly known that traveling mid-week will offer you cheaper tickets when it comes to flights, trains, and buses, but what if you can’t take that much holiday from work?
“Traveling from Saturday to Monday rather than Friday to Sunday will mean not only bagging cheaper deals but avoiding those chaotic ‘rush hours’.”
Cody also recommended booking things in advance to make even more savings.
Included in that is travel insurance, which he says can be better value when bought with plenty of time to spare.
He added: “Travel insurance is often left until the last minute, but this can drive costs higher.
“Set aside ample time before traveling to find the best insurance deals. Consider if you will be traveling more than once this year, in which case, annual cover may be cheaper.
“Finally, don’t buy insurance from the travel operator straight away – shop around.
“This type of cover from the travel operator is unlikely to be tailored to you, and may be more expensive than you can find elsewhere.”
Other experts have also revealed that it is cheaper to buy tickets on some days than it is on others.
Consumer expert Harry Wallop told Sun Online Travel that prices can vary, depending on which day people are looking at them.
He said: “It’s not that strange or unusual to think that flights cost a different amount, depending on when you actually fly because just like there is peak season, there are peak days of the week.
“But what is slightly weird to people who aren’t inside of the industry, is that the price fluctuates depending on the day you actually make the booking.
“And that’s all down to this thing called dynamic pricing, whereby prices fluctuate up and down endlessly, depending on supply and demand.
“According to all of the number crunching by airlines, the cheapest day to book a flight is a Sunday.
“On a domestic flight, if you’re booking on a Sunday, rather than booking on a Friday, it saves you about 20 per cent.
“On an international flight, it saves you about 10 per cent, which may not seem that much, but obviously long haul flights now are often extremely expensive, some are £800, so you’re saving £80 – that runs into the hundreds for a family of four.”
Meanwhile another travel expert follows these three steps to keep their holiday costs down.
Booking a mystery holiday is another way to get a holiday for cheap.