How To Get Cheap Airfare Tickets

One sector of the economy which has suffered perhaps more than any other from the depression in the global financial market is the travel industry. To be slightly more accurate, international travel is where the squeeze has really been placed. A lot of people who most years would actively consider flying abroad for their holiday have decided in the wake of job losses and reduced incomes that staying close to home for a holiday is perhaps more prudent. For anyone who retains an element of wanderlust that simply cannot be satisfied by a short stay in a neighbouring state, the importance of reduced air fares has become all the greater. You can still fly abroad for a holiday, assuming you have the means to pay – it is all about maximising what you can get for your money.

To find the cheapest air fares, you need to widen the range of your search. The laws of supply and demand dictate that where there is a lot of demand the prices will be higher. Therefore, while prices may have dropped to forestall a mass exodus from the traditional holiday hot spots, there will still be a premium for flying to places where a lot of people still want to go. But just because a place is not frequented by as many tourists, that does not mean that it is going to be a bad place to visit. For many of us, in fact, that is a selling point. Many people complain about the tourist traps as holiday destinations, feeling that if they want an experience that is just like home, they could stay at home and save a lot of money. Visiting somewhere that is off the beaten track may be the best thing you can do to enjoy your holiday and save on your budget.

To find a cheaper air fare you may be well advised to avoid package deals. Certainly, it is easier to make one payment and have your flight, board and meals covered for the holiday. It is, however, also more expensive. You can make an immediate saving by looking to arrange the details separately, although this will obviously be easier if you have a working knowledge of the language spoken in the country you are visiting. Travel agents are excellent at arranging lower cost air-fares if these are not bundled with transfers and accommodation.

Another way of finding lower air fares is to look online. There are numerous sites which promise to arrange the flight for you, and search for the lowest fare. You do, however, then have to pay them for the privilege of arranging things. There is an alternative here – you can use these sites to search for lower air fares and then book directly via the airline website, saving the arrangement fees in the process. This will mean more work on your part, but when you see the savings you make by being prepared to make your own arrangements it can easily pay for itself, and also give you greater freedom once you are on the ground in your destination.

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Going Solo

There is some amount of surprise – possibly even suspicion – that emerges when one tells co-workers and even friends that they are going to be holidaying on their own. The responses tend to vary between pity and unconvincing encouragement of the “good for you” variety. This is clearly misguided in the extreme, because traveling alone can be the very best way to holiday. Rather than thinly veiled pity and other even less wholesome emotions, the correct response to someone holidaying on their own really should be envy – because it means you get the holiday you want with no compromises. Never mind trying to find a break for two, four or more – the solo break is the way to go for the unmarried traveler.

The first thing that a solo break has over traveling with people is the freedom it gives you. If you have always wanted to go to a specific location but have never been able to persuade anyone to go with you, stop trying! They clearly don’t get it, and if they came along then you would spend more time trying to convince them that the city is awesome than enjoying it yourself. By going on your own you can set out an itinerary which fully suits you. Eat in the restaurants you want to eat in, catch the shows you wanted to catch and do all this when you want to. You’re traveling on your own, so you can go according to your own whim and enjoy the ride all the more.

The second point is connected to the first. Simply put, sometimes on holiday you have an instinctive desire to go to a specific place – and this instinct can arrive at the shortest notice. By traveling alone, if you have this kind of whim, you can set off and enjoy yourself without having to convince your companion(s) of the brilliance of your idea. Often when you have discussion about what you want to do, you find yourself sitting there two hours later, only knowing what you don’t want to do. This way, you can have the thought one moment, and be in the cab the next. Surely this beats deciding everything by committee? If you want to change your mind at a moment’s notice, you can. It can make the holiday perfect.

There are also other reasons for going solo. Among these, there is the fact that, if you go somewhere with a different language, the chances that your traveling partner will speak it as well as you do are remote. You will find yourself translating for them, and bound to them in situations where you would prefer a bit of space. And then there is also the fact that may just clinch it – going on holiday solo makes the group holidays better, because it allows you to discover a new place at your own pace and then introduce friends or family on a return trip – where you will be the perfect tour guide. This is really the best way to travel!

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Literary Holidays

To go on holiday is quite enough for many people. Once you get to that mid-point in the year, having been working flat out for some months, it is more than enough to get away from it all and spend some time by a swimming pool. Others, however, will enjoy the chance to go and do something that they have not had the opportunity to do for some time. Cultural trips are something that can be considered a niche market – you either enjoy it or you do not. They are, however, growing more popular than ever, and holiday makers will look to the books on their shelves before the brochures at the travel agency when it comes to planning a holiday.

The world does not view literature as something that as borders. There are great writers from many countries, and their influences, muses and their childhood haunts are greatly varied. Whoever your favourite writer is, there is a tour to be made in their honour. Their original writings may not even have been in English – some of the finest writers in the world are only available through the wonders of translation. This makes it all the better to take a little literary tour in their honour – you can enjoy the wonders of another country while witnessing what influenced your heroes. If it so happens that your favourite writer grew up 25 kilometres away from where you live, then you can at least make a cheap day trip out of the experience.

For the Canadian bibliophile, it is possible to travel and see the old haunts of arguably Canada’s greatest living fiction author Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale among other books. A varied childhood took Margaret from her birthplace in Ottawa to the wilder areas of Northern Quebec and back again, before heading on to Sault Sainte Marie and Toronto, where she read English. She has taught in many universities in Canada and beyond as a professor of English. For any budding writer, to see the sights that sparked such creativity into life can surely never be a bad thing.

For those who wish to spread their wings a little more, there are options just beyond the borders of Canada – some people will invariably wish to follow in the footsteps of the great travelogue authors like Jack Kerouac or Hunter S Thompson. Others will be keen to see the sights that influenced the likes of F Scott Fitzgerald, James Ellroy and Edgar Allen Poe, to whose work Baltimore has become an almost permanent monument.

Further south, in the Hispanic area of Central and South America there are many reminders of the great work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende and Carlos Fuentes. Elsewhere in the world there have been amazing writers in so many nations – Ireland has Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats, England has William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer and very many others. France and Spain have had wonders which need no introduction, and the Africa of Senghor and Fanon among others will capture the imagination of any lover of great literature.

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Not Everyone Speaks English

Going abroad for a holiday is something that everybody should do at least once in their life, finances and technicalities permitting. Of course, there is no use trying to convince someone who is a global travel skeptic that they should broaden their horizons. But for anyone else particularly anyone who is wavering over the idea, the attractions of going somewhere completely different must be underlined. They say that travel broadens the mind. They also say that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Only the first of these is really true. If you are traveling, the very best thing about it is experiencing life as it is lived in a different culture.

Foreign travel affords the traveler a lot of different experiences. The very fabric of life in a foreign country is different. From standard considerations like food and climate, to more esoteric matters like architecture and entertainment, a foreign holiday can really open your eyes. But for a holiday like this to have the desired effect it is important that you participate in the experience as fully as you can. It is a truism that you can only take from an experience as much as you put into it. There are cases where this is untrue. Yet, there is a lot of truth in it. You need to be prepared for anything on a foreign holiday. As much as anything else, this means that you need to learn the language.

Now, just in case anyone is panicking, this does not mean that you need to be fluent in Russian if you are planning a short break in Moscow. Fluency in a language is something that can only be achieved by years of study and ideally a large amount of time spent “living” in the language concerned. That means working, shopping and socialising in the language. But there is really no reason not to at least make a concerted effort to learn a few phrases which you will inevitably need on your travels. You don’t need to be able to discuss the political complexities of the city and country where you are holidaying, but being able to order breakfast or book a taxi cab will be useful.

It is a very common opinion that there is little point trying to speak the language with natives, because “everyone speaks English anyway”. There are several reasons why this is a lie, and a potentially damaging one. First of all, not everyone speaks English. In point of fact, particularly in countries with an established and internationally recognized language of their own, a lot of people don’t need to learn English and therefore don’t bother. Secondly, even though some people may speak excellent English, expecting them to change to suit you is a bit presumptuous – like saying “Why bother giving this person my contact details? They can look them up anyway!”

It is more polite to at least attempt to speak the language when you are abroad. If you make the effort, your holiday will be much the better for it as the locals will receive you much more warmly due to you making the effort.

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Why We Should Travel

Ask a hundred people what they would do if they became a millionaire overnight, and at least half of them will include among their imaginary spending plans “a nice holiday somewhere hot”. Some will be able to take or leave the hot weather, but in the main the holiday will play an important part. We love our holidays, as they allow us to recharge our batteries and have a good time away from work concerns and other stresses. While some people will choose to take their holidays at home, there are enough of us who simply insist that a holiday must involve travel. Why is this? Well, there are a few reasons.

1. A change of scenery – With the best will in the world, spending a holiday at home gives too many reminders of work. Waking up in your own bed makes it all too easy to get the irrational fear that you are late for work. Sitting watching TV in your own living room gives way too much of a feeling of a surreptitious sick day – you spend too much time wondering if work is going to call and ask you to come in. Let’s see them do that if you are a few hundred miles away – or further. On a holiday abroad – or even just in a different state – you get the chance to unwind completely in a different setting. That change of scene can make a huge difference to your ability to relax.

2. A change of culture – The old saying goes “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. Many people have had their own hilarious interpretations of this phrase in times gone past, many involving lions and Christians and almost all thinking they were the first person to make the joke. The key point about the original saying is that when you holiday somewhere different, to get the full benefit of it you should attempt to experience the things that locals do as a matter of course. The huge number of cultures in this world makes it interesting, and seeing things from a different perspective is never a bad thing.

3. A change of cuisine – We all know what we like, and many of us would go further, saying that we “like what we know”. While there is some truth to the suggestion that we all deal better with things that we are used to, the enjoyment of a holiday is often greatly increased by sampling the local cuisine. Of course, cuisine has become diverse even in single countries – most of us will have heard the possibly apocryphal story of a young boy holidaying in Italy, tugging on his mother’s sleeve and saying “Hey Mom, look! They have pizzas in Italy, too!” – but there is nothing like eating food made the way it was meant to be made, by people who have been eating it for years.

These are just three reasons, and undoubtedly you will have some of your own – feel free to share those, because people are like nations – we each appreciate different things.

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