A little smartness can help you save a lot of money while travelling around the world, enjoying best of hotels, food and sightseeing, especially if you are travelling with family.
I am writing this blog based on my very own experience, having travelled a lot – both domestic & overseas during last 4 -5 years, exploring and researching about how to get best package deals from various travel portals. Tips that I am going to share here have really helped me in saving a good amount of money.
For domestic travels, most of us can easily manage to book everything online all by ourselves however while travelling abroad, being in a relatively unknown terrain, it is more advisable to opt for some travel portal which can take care of Visas, Flights, Currency, Sightseeing etc.
Further since, usually Visa & Flight charges offered by various travel agencies are more or less the same, So I will focus here primarily on ways to get best Hotels deals as a part of International Holiday packages from various portals at a much reduced price because while travelling abroad, Hotel you stay at matters a lot for making sure that your vacations turn out to be memorable one.
I am sure all of us must have seen, heard & read about stories where a bad hotel ruined all the vacation fun. Obviously, none of us want that and hence the information below becomes all more important.
Step 1: Getting the basic information
Plan where exactly do you want to fly abroad and straight away give a call to any of your favorite travel portals, asking them to mail you a best available holiday package for that particular place ,with a 3 * Hotel and if you are a vegetarian , then please get your Dinners included in the package.
Step 2: Finalizing Hotels -The Game Plan
Play starts from hereon. Straightaway look out for the Hotels that they have mentioned in the itinerary and check for Prices/night for each of these hotels on their respective websites or on tripadvisor.com . This will give you a fair idea of average Price band of Hotels that your travel portal is offering you. ( I use TripAdvisor but you can use any other similar website which gives you required information in most user friendly format)
After that, simply search tripadvisor.com for best 3 or 4 star hotels in the ascending order of their Ranking, located in the city where you are going to stay overnight as per Schedule given by travel portal in step no. 1.
Out of that, simply shortlist Hotels which are of same average price range that we have figured out above but have much better ranking/reviews as compared to Hotels mentioned by Travel portals in their itinerary .
Once you shortlist 5-6 such hotels (I can guarantee that you will find more than 10 such options), simply drop a mail back to travel portal that you are interested in the package provided by them , provided any of these 5-6 hotels chosen by you (take care of priority order while mailing) is finalized at no extra cost. Since they are of same price range, so usually travel portals easily agree to any 1 hotel out of your choice list.
This activity will take about an hour but is totally worth it as this way, at no extra cost, you can enjoy your stay at – hospitality wise, Location wise and whole Ambiance wise- a much better Hotel, thereby making your vacations a better one.
You can repeat this activity for all the locations covered in your itinerary and for any star Hotel.
I finally got Hotel AL Khoory Executive after using above mentioned negotiation module which turned out to be a wonderful Hotel at Dubai !
# But wait, game is not over yet, watch out for jackpot at Step no. 4
Step -3: Another Bonanza tip before finalizing packages
At most places abroad, taxi charges are sky high so act smartly. Get your meals ,especially dinners, included in the package along with pick & drop and if possible, get dining spot fixed at a happening night out place in that location. Portals show initial reluctance but they eventually give in. So this way, you get to do sightseeing + dinner + taxi ride all at the cost of Dinner.
We did the same at Dubai where our we used to dine at food court, Dubai Mall and enjoy the musical fountains & view or Burj Khalifa every single night.
Step – 4: The Final Nail in the coffin
Once you are done with steps 1, 2 & 3 and you have finalized everything with your travel portal including Visa & Flight details, Hotels, Sightseeing Itinerary, Meal details etc., just request your travel portal to send a clean final mail, clearly mentioning everything in details including final package charges.
Once you receive this mail, simply forward this mail to 2-3 other reputed travel portals, stating that you have been offered this package with so & so details and at this price. And that if exactly same package with exactly same inclusions can be offered to you at a reduced price, then you are interested.
More often than not, you will receive a positive reply – either same package with reduced price or same price with more inclusions.
Now Step no. 4 may sound unethical to some but hey, we are not lying, we are not cheating, we are not causing any monetary loss to anybody, we are simply showing little smartness to save our hard earned money and we have every right to do that.
And believe me, these travel portal executives are really trained to be over smart and extract maximum profit by repetitively uttering “Sir We are offering you package at our cost price only” or “Madam , Profit margins have really narrowed down these days.”
We are just trying to outsmart these over smarties, it’s as simple as that !!
I hope the information above proves helpful to you.
Happy vacations !
Would love to hear your thoughts & feedback. Please do like & share the post if you found it helpful .
Namaste & Good bye till my next post !!
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