Top Tips to Tackle Surprise Costs While Traveling

If you’re looking for budget holidays then you’ve come to the right place. When you sit down and work out your budget for your next big holiday you probably factor in the flights, the hotels, and you might even factor in meals. Unless you’re visiting an area you’ve visited before then chances are you’ve underestimated the cost of meals. Remember, you’re likely going to be eating out for three meals a day, plus snacks and beverages along the way. Don’t forget spending money for gifts and souvenirs and anything you may have forgotten to pack.

The point is – the additional costs add up quickly when you’re not prepared. So, let us help you keep your budget in the black with these top tips.

Plan

One of the best ways to curb your spending is to create a detailed itinerary ahead of time. That means you can plot out how you might need to spend visiting certain spots, as well as factoring in your spending money, and meal costs. You may find TripAdvisor particularly helpful to get a good idea of how much you can expect to spend. Of course, finding a hotel that includes breakfast with your stay will save you quite a bit. Half board means two meals, which means you only need to eat out once a day, it can save you a fortune. You can also save a bit of cash by packing snacks to take with you – you might want to try some of the local goods, but if you have snack packs with you it will help you save some money.

Room Sharing

Traveling in a group? Why not cut down on hotel costs by sharing a room. Plenty of options are available for additional beds, and for short trips, this is a good option to save quite a bit of cash.

Don’t Grab Taxi

For the most part, you should avoid taxis altogether. Depending on where you go, there’s a good chance the taxi driver will smell the tourist on you and take you the long way or just leave the meter off and make up a number. Check out the local transport in advance, you might be surprised to find how often trains and buses come and just how cheap it is to use them. You can handle this in your planning stage – as you’ll want to know the best way to get to the areas you will be visiting.

Baggage Fees

Don’t get caught out by carrying extra weight in your suitcase – if you can’t purchase your own luggage scale, at least find a normal scale to weigh your luggage before you leave for the airport. This will allow you plenty of time to repack your luggage, distribute weight to other cases, and maybe ditch some things you don’t absolutely need. You’d be surprised at how quickly the costs mount when you start paying extra fees for baggage.

Before you take a deep dive to compare cheap holidays, swing by and check out the wotif promo code that could save you a fortune. Traveling is exciting, it’s fun, but it’s also exhausting and challenging. The best way to take the challenge out of it is to plan ahead for just about every eventuality, so research the area(s) you will be visiting, talk to people who have been, and find out as much as you can about it before creating your own itinerary and budget. When you do create your budget make sure you don’t use the entirety of your max spend, call that a contingency fund.