Ah Trini Travelogue Trinidad & Tobago's most travelled blogger through 99 countries. Create and Re-Engineer your life for travel.
When planning any last minute trip there are a couple things to keep in mind
- The first rule of any last-minute trip is to have no expectations about where you want to do. Specific locations add mandatory requirements to your planning. As long as something is mandatory and inflexible, one has to pay for that inflexibility. This is firm rule with popular tourist destinations like San Francisco, New York, Paris or London. (Caveat : If you have enough Aeroplan miles to go anywhere, then it trumps the previous rule)
- “Spontaneous personalities, will travel”. Typically, those who can drop everything at a moment’s notice can get the best deals and an escape from the realities of the daily grind or personal difficulties.
- Packaging together all elements of your vacation can sometimes result in a lot of savings. Many travel companies deal exclusively in package vacations, and when a vacation charter is not sold to capacity, agents began slashing prices to avoid losing money on the deal. Keep in mind, that regardless of the package, if you an adventure traveller, who does not like structure to your trip, then packages might not work for you.
- You can actually negotiate the price of any fare. People don’t understand how, but by simply ASKING for a better price or saying that you saw a better fare online, will invariably get you a better price on a vacation package, flight or hotel. On any given (non-charter) flight, there is a mathematical improbability that more than three people paid the same fare. This is because of complex demand pricing rules that all airlines use to optimize their load factor and RPK.
Bottomline: Always try speaking to a human where possible, to ask for the better price.
