Tips for Cheap Summer Travel

We are in the process of planning our summer travel. We will be taking a trip to the New York area as well as a trip to Europe and are always looking for ways to keep from breaking our bank.

Here are some tips for cheap summer travel that helped us save money:

Use Mileage
Now to effectively really use the miles, you need to book in advance, to save any booking fees. Also, award seats are more limited and hard to secure. Especially during holiday periods.

Pick the airline program you prefer and try to consolidate all mileage activity to that mileage earning card. Check with the airline program website and review all the mileage earning possibilities they offer. We don't like to use credit cards, but Citibank offers American AAdvantage miles on their debit card programs, and we have been using them for a few years now. We use the card for everything, from grocery shopping to paying taxes.

Many programs now allow you to combine mileage and money if you don't have enough miles for a full award. Programs also allow you to buy additional miles and also now break the outbound and inbound segments as individual awards, so you could pay for one part and use mileage for the return.

Advance Purchase
If you plan and ahead and even pay ahead you can save a lot. Many hotels offer their lowest rates on an advance purchase. So, if you can confirm your travel plans, check into pre-purchase options.

Airfare is also based on advance purchase, with the lowest fare normally available 21 days from date of travel.

Stay in Smaller or Surrounding Cities
Look at surrounding areas and neighborhoods, instead of popular city centers. You can also combine the two, stay a day or two in the middle of a city center and other days in an outlying neighborhood, to get a sense of both.

Same advice applies to US travel. We are planning a little beachside getaway here in Los Angeles. We were shocked to see every nice Santa Monica hotel with nightly rates north of $300. The solution was to go 30 minutes south to Long Beach, where we got an oceanfront room at the Long Beach Hyatt for $159 a night.

Look at Economically Distressed Destinations
The world has gone through some difficult economic times lately and some countries have almost defaulted on their debts. Countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland have experienced severe economic distress and are working very hard to recover and attract tourists. The value of the dollar is stronger and prices have dropped dramatically for everything.

Don't feel guilty, traveling there and spending your money is exactly what they want and what will revive the economy and tourism industry.