This year I really noticed a lot of big travel offers between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Most of them were for bookings the first part of 2020. The deals were plentiful ranging from huge cruise bonuses, tour packages and big hotel room discounts. Unfortunately, I did not have solid travel plans for those early months so I wasn’t able to take advantage of things like 15% Portal Rebates stacked with 25% Off Room Rate discounts. Drat!
But this new insight got me thinking that as a Budget Traveler, I need to do a better job of planning trips at least 4 months ahead in order to get some of the best deals. It also tells me that planning a bigger trip for the first quarter of the year could be advantageous based on the number of travel deals available for that time frame.
Our Travel Schedule
Our travel trend has been to take a few 3 day weekends during the first 4 months of the year and plan our bigger trips between June and October. There are a few reasons for that.
- My Husbands vacation days are usually pretty wiped out by the end of year and don’t refresh until April.
- My part time job has some extra money making opportunities during those first few months of the year. Since we live in Michigan, the weather isn’t that great locally during those months, so it doesn’t really feel like a sacrifice to use those wintery weekends to build my travel savings fund instead of traveling.
- We plan an annual trip to visit our Son in Texas so that it includes attending a college football game. That means we are locked into September through November dates for that particular trip.
- I don’t like to do much travel in November and December because of the holidays. There is just so much going on during those months!
My Take Away
That is the thing about Budget Travel, if you are paying attention, you always learn new ways to save money or grab deeper deals for your travel. Planning is always a key! I can’t stress enough the importance of following travel sites (hotels, cruises, car rental, etc), reading travel posts and regularly checking available deals on your credit cards or shopping portals. You can save hundreds on your travel costs with a little information and a few mouse clicks.
Personally, I have been so focused on a big trip my husband and I will be taking in 2020, that I haven’t given much thought to planning any other travel. I need to get on the ball! At least this year my Daughter and I already know the destination where we want to go on our Spring Girls Getaway trip…Arizona. Last year we had our dates but struggled to pick a destination until about 30 days out. This will probably be the first trip I get planned for 2020.
Have you started Planning your 2020 Travel Schedule? Remember, the Early Bird catches the worm. In this case that means the best travel deals!
Dream, Plan, Save, Adventure
The World According to Dev 