Going on holiday is always the highlight of the year, especially if you have been saving up and looking forwards to a nice week or two abroad somewhere. The only problems with holidays is that they can end up being very expensive and in all fairness, depending how you have done your holiday, it can work out very expensive. Which is why I love finding an amazing budget holiday.
Well we have found a way to build our own cheap holidays abroad and actually save us a lot of money in the long run, all you have to do is actually plan and work out how you are doing and what you are doing.
For the past couple of years, we have stopped going to the high street travel agent and building our own holidays and it has saved us anywhere between £600 and £1200 on our holiday. Low cost holidays are the best and spending the extra cash while on holiday rules. Remember just because it’s budget holidays doesn’t mean they are going to be rubbish.
So first of all, when we are planning our holiday, we always go back to our bucket list, look at some places and decide where we fancy doing, the process is always the same no matter where we plan to go, the only thing you need to think about in addition to the next steps is your transfers from the airport to the hotel and back.
How to plan and build your budget holiday
So if you are wondering what we do, well we follow these simple steps to plan our holidays.
- Decide on where we are going to go.
- Look at the travel agents, just to get a price and see how much we can beat there price by.
- Set a budget for the actually holiday, don’t include any spending money.
- Decide on the dates, but keep in mind you may have to look a few days before or after your ideal date.
- Then check SkyScanner for Flights
- Check hotels.com for the hotel and check the reviews on TripAdvisor
- Book the flights and hotel.
- Then enjoy the holiday.
Now that all sounds so simple, and in all fairness it is, building your own holiday doesn’t have to be hard work. The hard work starts when you are looking for the best deals available and obviously keeping within your budget.
Getting Cashback On Your Budget Holiday
Now before we even book anything through any site, we always have a look on TopCashBack and see if the website is on there and what cash back we can get. Now TopCashBack is one of our favourite sites for getting a little of cash back from our spending, sometimes they don’t give much back, BUT something is better than nothing in our opinion. At the moment you will get 15p back from booking on SkyScanner, we know that isn’t loads but it really is something, if you use TopCashBack a lot, then it will make a difference.
When it comes to hotels.com you can get 10% back on your hotel booking, so that can seriously be a few ££ back in your pocket and makes using TopCashBack that more attractive. If you’re looking to book cheap breaks and you still get up to 10% cashback then that’s just more money back in your pocket to use.
Cheap Flights Around The World
SkyScanner is a fantastic website where you can look at flights to your destinations, find the best flight and deals available, this alone will save you money instead of going to the travel agents. You will need to pay for the flights straight away, so make sure you have a debit or credit card to do so. Cheap flights can really help towards cheap holidays abroad as well as you can save loads with flights! Although remember to also check skyscanner for cheap last minute holidays which they sometimes have on offer as a holiday package.
The Best Hotels For A Budget Holiday
Now when we go on holiday, we always look for the bets hotel that we can within our budget and within the distance that we want from usually the city centre. Once we have found our top 3 hotels, this is where the research element starts. You HAVE TO research the hotel on TripAdvisor, see what other people are saving about the hotel and area, that way you know if you are going to go to a nice hotel or not. Don’t just take the first review, have a look over a few reviews before making your final decision.
Now with hotels.com there are a couple of options with booking the hotel, some hotels request that you pay for the hotel in full straight away, but some hotels and deals allow you to not pay until you have arrived for check in at the hotel, this can be very handy if you are a little short on the cash front when you are making the booking. It does make it so much easier. We have used both in the past. Hotels now also do cheap package holidays so it’s totally worth giving them a look at along with their last minute deals when the rooms aren’t booked out in time. I just love discount holidays when they haven’t filled all the rooms or flights, it makes travelling a little sweeter knowing I didn’t have to pay as much as everyone else! You can also find some cheap all inclusive holidays on there and last minute breaks with some last minute city breaks thrown in if you don’t want to travel abroad.
Conclusion
Once you are happy with the flights and hotel, get booking and don’t forget TopCashBack. Then all you need to do is actually enjoy your holiday. Work hard, keep saving and once the holiday comes around you will be able to enjoy a nice break. Don’t forget as well to look at late deals towards the end of the year because you might just get some cheap holiday deals then.
We saved £600 on a weeks holiday to Benidorm, we found a crazy deal for 2 people for 1 week, bed, breakfast and evening meal for the princely sum of £400 total price not each!! We even went to a travel agents and they told us that it would be a minimum of £400 per person but when they actually looked into it, it was nearly £1,000. You can always take a look online for last minute holiday deals as they’re always cheaper than anything you’ll find in store, even at the same travel agents! So take a look at holiday packages when you get a chance and you might get lucky, even more so at the start of the new year.
When we booked to go to Bangkok, the hotel cost us £900 for 2 weeks and that was in a 4 star hotel, while we were there, we found out, if we had gone through a travel agents, it should have cost us £3,500, so we really did get lucky here. Why not give it a go yourself and tell us where you are going and how much you saved. If you find some amazing holiday deals do let us know, we love cheap travelling at a budget cost! Also package holidays that are all inclusive so you hardly have to buy food unless you really want to! So enjoy your last minute getaways and let us know how they went!
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