Travelling in the white week and examining shopping online are two of the many factors that make a vacation-planning successful. We have gathered some of the lesser-known travel experts’ advice on how to get the best travel deals. The compilation of the 10 tips to attain the best deal on your upcoming travel venture is presented below.

Take a Repositioning Cruise

In accordance with the season, Cruise lines shift their ships from one place to another. For instance, if they are in Alaska during summer, they are likely to be in the Caribbean during winter; and it goes like that. So, instead of moving these ships totally empty across the Atlantic, the Pacific or the Panama Canal, they give passengers nominally priced rides. Wayne Dunlap, the renowned travel writer and author of “Plan Your Escape, Secrets of Traveling the World for Less Than the Cost of Living at Home” says, “You have all the standard features of the ship—the food, entertainment, it all goes with the ship to the new place, but it’s much cheaper and less crowded.” He suggests browsing VacationsToGo.com, a site specializing in arranging cruise holidays, for the timetable of repositioning cruises. In his opinion, taking a repositioning cruise is better than catching a flight to Europe, because it is more relaxing and economical, although a bit time-consuming.

Score Online Bounce-Back Deals

In order to make the biggest savings on hotels, rental cars and various travel privileges, we browse and shop around on many travel booking websites. But instead of buying or booking instantly, we can take the chance to let the deals reach us. The trick is to go online to a few websites and pretend to book a room or car, without paying a penny. Follow the procedure and fill out the form with everything required including your personal information, especially your name and email address, so that you can open the door to get exclusive offers via email. Now, all you need to do is wait patiently for a response from the website. More often than not, it will work and the website will start emailing you. Dunlap says, “By the third or fourth day, you’ll get offers that are significantly lower” and confirms that by practising this technique, he has booked rental cars for as low as $14 a day and got half-priced hotel rooms. He also explains that “The companies do this because they don’t want to lose you as a customer.” At times, you can see targeted ads offering exciting deals as soon as you go online if you don’t clear your browser history after a prolonged search for special kinds of deals on the internet.

Use Specialized Websites

For finding the greatest deals, there is no other option which is as suitable as visiting websites that are specialised in this field. Never leave the lesser-known sites, since they can have better deals and valuable travel information that may benefit you. Melanie Nayer, a well-known hotel reporter with some serious experiences, advises travellers to consider visiting RoomKey.com, a site jointly founded by several hospitality companies such as Choice Hotels International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Marriott International, Wyndham Worldwide and so on, to get rooms at reduced prices. GetaRoom.com and HotelTonight.com are also among the hotel booking sites that she believes deserve attention. Dunlap, on the other hand, asks travellers to check out TripAdvisor.com in order to learn and be informed about hotels and their locations. For educational tours, RoadScholar.org is a very reliable and approved site. The organisation provides educative adventures and voluntary tours, principally for grown-ups.

Think Home, Not Hotel

Dunlap recommends home swapping as an effective method for saving money on accommodation. You can literally get to live for free in a city or country outside your own if you just ‘swap home’ with someone. He suggests checking out HomeExchange.com, a leading house swapping website, with listings of over 400,000 homes in 187 countries. Although home swapping does not cost you any money, to become and stay a Member on the site, you have to pay $150 per year. Dunlap hints at some other benefits of house swapping as he says: “We’ve even swapped cars with someone, and you can arrange to do things like taking care of each other’s pets.” If you are looking for a home to rent and do not approve of the idea of sharing your home, sites like VRBO.com and AirBnB.com are perfect for you. Robert Reid, US Travel Editor at Lonely Planet, believes, “It’s becoming dramatically more economical and appealing to find a place to stay” on these before-mentioned sites. He further adds, “You can save a lot of money this way, and you get a better feel of a place, a more local experience.”

Don’t Neglect Going Direct

Sites like Hotels.com offer great discounts on booking hotels. However, they are not the only websites for discovering hotels that coordinate with your interest and getting the best deals. Sometimes, a hotel’s own website can provide you with some exciting deals. Nayer remarks, “You can get some of the best hotel deals right now right from the hotel’s website.” But, if you don’t find any prominent offer that matches what you have already found online, she emphasizes making direct contact to the respective hotel and ask them if they can afford you the deal that you are coveting. She says, “Often they will match the offer, provide a comparable offer or at least explain why the offers are different—it’s usually because the room on their site and the room on Hotels.com are different type rooms.” She also suggests booking hotels directly, since the cancellation policies they offer tend to be more flexible compared to the others.

Follow the News

On occasions, getting the best deals depends on the news. If the news is bad, you are likely to score greater deals. For instance, cogitate on Greece’s great economic crisis and Asia’s SARS outbreak. Dunlap says, “People often stay away from places for years after something happens, even after everything is back to normal”. In his view, there is a possibility that the whole country is not affected by the trouble befalling it. Perhaps, one part is affected, while others remain normal and safe for visiting. It is obvious that planning such a trip is questionable and creates a lot of doubts in mind, but Dunlap clears most of them by stating: “People in the countries affected by mishaps depend on tourism to support their families, so travelling there is a win-win for everyone.”

Know When to Book and When to Travel

In general, Wednesday is accepted as the least expensive day to take a domestic flight, whereas Tuesday and Saturday get the second and third positions, respectively. Allen Silkin, the vice president of e-commerce for an international travel agency called Flight Center USA, is of the opinion that travelling by plane can save you a big amount of money. He suggests purchasing airline tickets between midnight and 1 a.m. on Wednesdays and for Tuesdays, the ideal time, in his opinion, is after 3 o’clock in the afternoon. According to him, these are the hours when the airlines offer their best discounts to passengers. On the other hand, Peter Scott, the director of marketing at HotelCoupons.com, declares that the best timing for hotel deals depends on the sort of lodge. If you are searching for resort properties then Sunday is your day to find some satisfactory deals. But, if you are going to a small city with smaller hotels, Scott thinks that it would be wise to expect better deals in the middle of the week and suggests booking a room later in the day when they are more prone to give you discounts.

Reward Yourself

Scott Grimmer, founder and author at MileValue.com, expresses his opinion that in continual travelling, travel rewards credit cards can come in handy. He believes the Chase Sapphire Preferred card can turn out to be useful for many travellers, because, it rewards you two points for every $1 spent on travel and restaurants and gifts you 40,000 additional points as soon as you cross the target spending of $3,000. The consultants at an award-winning site specialised in credit-card deals, known as NerdWallet.com, advocates choosing the cards such as the Capital One Venture Rewards card and the Starwood Preferred Guest card from American Express. The customers of Capital One cards can earn 2 miles for every $1 spent on whatever they wish and that can be obtained as a statement credit against any kind of travel cost. At the same time, the card charges you no foreign transaction fees, which can be highly beneficial for international travellers. On the other side, the Starwood Preferred rewards one Starpoint for every $1 spent. This may seem very insignificant to you, but, NerdWallet.com concludes: on average, these Starpoints are worth 2.3 cents, which is considered to be pretty high for the category.

Land Senior Discounts

Like numerous different sectors, aged people usually get discounts in the travel industry. Such discounts are often referred to as “senior discounts”. So, if you are an aged person, precisely, 55 or more years old, your age can benefit you largely. Karolina Shenton, the Marketing and Sales Operations Manager for a cruise travel booking site called “The Cruise Web”, states that senior discounts on cruise lines are obvious in most cases. Travellers with an age of 60 or above often get discounts on booking hotel rooms, while passengers aged 62 and older are granted a 15% discount by Amtrak. And finally, organizations like AARP offer several travel-related deals for elderly people.

Consider a River Cruise

Exploring European cities with spending a comparatively small amount of money is perhaps only possible through river cruising. This transpires because numerous cities in Europe stand along the shores of rivers or seas and they heavily rely on water transportation. Linda Messina, the Director of Cruise Product for a cruise vacations specialist site called “Expedia CruiseShipCenters”, clarifies that the vessels for such voyages are generally undersized compared to the regular cruise vessels and says, “They are geared toward seasoned travellers who are independent and want to experience the destination.” The demands for these cruises are high between June and September. Thus, planning a trip during this time frame won’t be a smart move. Pick a date from the 1st January until the end of May for booking, since, during this period, the prices for these cruises usually go down. To sum up, with wide-ranging facilities, a river cruise is certainly a great option to see Europe.