Know before you go is one of our primary goals. To afford to travel more often, we work hard at getting the best prices and look for deals and packages. Kathey is registered with Travel Zoo and a few other websites to keep an eye out for such deals and to know what things are going for. She receives weekly, or more often, emails with hot deals for airlines, hotels, rental cars and travel packages. Travel Zoo sends out their Top 20 travel deals every Wednesday.
But, the devil is in the details. If you are looking at traveling from San Francisco to Washington DC for the spring cherry tree bloom and start looking for airfare, you might get really excited when you, as we did recently, see a $99 round trip fare. You might be ready to jump on that, until you’ve read the offer dates, mid-December to early March. DC is darned cold in winter.
Similarly, you can get great package deals to Ireland—for January. Or, as we did once, an organized tour of China for November. Beijing and Xian are seriously cold in November. We still had a great time.
Too, read up on travel restrictions, cancellation fees and layover duration. We’ve many stories about finding great airfare and happily booking the trip, only to later find out we had a 13 hour layover in say, Chicago—in December. Burr!
Bargain airfare isn’t such a bargain if you ever need to change or cancel, say, a ticket bought on Cheapo Air, or it’s an Aeroflot flight in a 1960s aircraft.