Oh the economy. How I have grown to despise that word. Even more so since it has been affecting me personally. And while it’s scary- there can be a lot of opportunity as well. If you are feeling the economy blues- it may be time to take a quick vacation to forget your troubles for a few days.

It’s important to look for some bargains when your pockets aren’t as deep as they used to be. Here are some tips for traveling cheap and in style.

Sign up for e-newsletters: As annoying as they can be- signing up for discount traveling sites newsletters can help you save money when you are very flexible on your plans. Updates will come to your inbox informing you of awesome Las Vegas hotel deals, and cheap airplane tickets to Orlando (and more- those were obviously examples).

Sign up for Airline’s e-newsletters and download widgets: Along the same lines as the above tip, many airlines also have a newsletter that will ping you when they have can’t miss deals. Delta and Southwest are both known for last minute deals that can be found by their newletters or widgets. However with those deals you must act fast- they disappear as quickly as they come.

Be flexible: While many places are slashing prices to be competitive others are raising prices to keep afloat. If you are dead set on a location then try to be flexible on timing. For example many hotels are cheaper during the week then the weekend (depending if they are a tourist location- you will find the opposite if they rely on business travelers). If you are set on your timing then try to be flexible on location.

Do your research: Nobody has a ton of time to sit around and look at every discount traveler’s site, but you can find some great deals. Choose a few- because most are pretty similar and go to town comparing rates. Some good ones are priceline.com, travelocity, orbitz, kayak.com, and many others.

Don’t forget to haggle: I feel like with the internet and all other tools that we have at our disposal that haggling has become a lost art. Many have let the internet take on that role for them. While it may take guts- the payoff can be big! Having worked at a hotel before- I know that haggling can be an acceptable part of the booking process (usually done in person at the hotel). It only works if there are a lot of hotels in the area and the vacancy rate is typically below 70%- but it varies from hotel to hotel. At the hotel I worked for we would have the set rate for the day and then a separate rack that we could not go below. Obviously our goal was to upsell but it was better to go lower than to leave a vacant room.

There are many other things you can do as well to get good deals (please share your tips) but these are some of the very basic tips that have helped me in my travels. Traveling is a luxury that is most likely the first to go when making cutbacks in your budgets. But if done right it may actually help cutback other areas in your budget including therapy bills!

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Tags: budget travel, economy, get away, steals of a deal, traveling

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 2:03 pm and is filed under My Life, Travel Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.