Be Gone
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Fly First Class For Free, and Other Secrets of a Travel Hacker, Part 2
In Part I of her travel series, Taryn Southern shared her secrets for ensuring a spot next to the high-rollers in first class when you fly. Now that she's gotten you to your destination in style, though, where to stay? Here are some affordable options from our favorite travel hacker that don't involve roaches, showers stolen from the set of 'Psycho', or general fear for your life.
1. STAY LOCAL - Staying with a local or in a local apartment is my favorite way to travel, so I’m going to recommend this option first. My favorite website for making local arrangements is Airbnb. It has hundreds of listings of incredible, unique hotels/apartments/homes in faraway places for any budget, and you can choose to search for room based rentals or full apartment/house/condo based rentals. Based on what’s available, you might very well end up choosing a destination just based on what you find on the site! I recently traveled through France using airbnb.com, and you can check out the resulting video blogs of my adventures in Cannes, Nice, and Monaco.
The friendly folks at Airbnb have awesomely offered Broke Girls Guide readers a special 25 Euro discount on any booking before Sept 30th, 2011, so be sure to use it if you’re going out of town any time soon! Simply visit Airbnb, and use the coupon code BGG25.
Another ‘staying local’ option is doing a trade, where you swap living arrangements with someone in another country, through a site like HomeExchange.com or SabbaticalHomes.com. If you have no problem with strangers being in your space, this is a great way to go!!
And finally, if you have zero budget and no place of your own to trade, there are various sites you can use that’ll get you a free room in a local’s place in exchange for English lessons or help around the house. Check out couchsurfing.org and servas.org first (the UK Times also recently wrote a nice little article about these sites.) Not guaranteed to be comfy, but you are guaranteed an adventure by going this route!
2. SIGN UP (AND USE!) HOTEL REWARD PROGRAMS – So maybe staying local just isn’t your thing – that’s okay too. And there are certainly places in the world where I would feel more comfortable just kicking back at a hotel. So let’s get into hotels.
Just like airlines, hotels have reward programs for your loyalty. If you frequently travel on business, make sure you always give them your membership number so you don’t miss out on valuable vacation points. I’m a member of the Starwood program, the Marriott program, and the Hilton program, but if you’re going to pick one to use for all travel, I recommend Starwood. They seem to have the most flexibility, multi-tiered options, and most importantly, availability. (Also a big kudos to Starwood’s website, which is SO much more user friendly than other hotel award sites.)
3. SNAG HOT HOTEL CREDIT CARD OFFERS – Let’s say you never stay in hotels for business, and you’d like a little hacker hotel point boost NOW. Well, guess what - there are credit card point programs for everything, kids. Right now you can get a Starwood card with 30,000 points after spending $4500 in three months. That’s enough for 5 nights free in a Category 5 hotel (category 5 hotels are REALLY NICE.)
If Starwood hotels aren’t your thing, check out The Points Guy for a list of the most recent and best hotel credit card deals. Just make sure you’re getting enough starting bonus points to last you several free nights in one of their hotels.
Taryn has so much amazing advice that we're bringing you more of it tomorrow, so stay tuned! In the meantime, check out her blog.
Aug 02, 2024 - 08:31 AM