Special Edition -- Wandering Berkman’s Travel Hacks

 How you doin'??.... from the Wandering Berkmans!

Oh Jersey-- I suppose we missed you more than we thought! 

As we've been doing our traveling thing, some of the most frequent questions we get from our friends and family relate to our planning methods.   Don, our planner extraordinaire, has put together his best hacks to help you start traveling again!  Do yourself a favor-- save this for when you start traveling again--it's lengthy but learn from our pain ;) 

Take it away, DB!  

Our unfailingly generous and forgiving
Danish family Worning let Don practice his stick shift driving on their car doh!

Rental Car--  

I use AutoSlash at https://www.autoslash.com/, it’s been the best way of booking a car that I have seen to date.  Take the five minutes or less to create a profile and include any memberships (Costco, AARP, Delta SkyMiles, etc) that you have.

Then use the site to book your car—they go through all the normal sites like any other aggregator.  But what works great here is if before the date you get your car they find another rental car with the same dates and locations that’s less expensive, the system emails you and you can then just re-book the car at the lower price.  We’ve saved hundreds of dollars doing this over various times.

-- I’ll book a car using the “Pay Later” option which is similar to what most people do.  As I get closer to the actual pick-up date, say within 10 days—and I know that the trip will go through is planned, I’ll see if I can find a discount via the “Pay Now” feature.   This is definitely more hit or miss than the Autoslash, but it’s worth a quick check about 10 days or so before pick up date.

--I never buy the car insurance the company offers as most all credit cards pick this up—but check first.  When we rent cars internationally, it almost always comes with car rental insurance built into the price—which is good 😉

Cape Cod with the Berkmans circa 2002.  Ah, the simple pleasures...

Lodging--  

We’re pretty much faithful users of AirBNB, mostly because of the size of selection and reviews.  When using AirBNB, we will look only at places that have 4+ reviews with an average score of at least 4.8 out of 5.  We’ll occasionally drop this to 4.7 if the selection is very limited, but not lower than this.  If in reading the reviews we see a comment related to noise, something was not clean, uncomfortable bed, etc., it definitely gives us pause but doesn’t totally eliminate the housing option unless a second person has a similar complaint.  If so, then they’re eliminated.

I’ll always contact the host before booking and just ask a few general questions (e.g. square footage of the place, proximity to mass transit, etc.).  This will give me a few answers, but just as important, I want to see responsiveness and tone.  Most hosts are very good in this area, so if they’re slow to respond (more than a day) or seem snippy, they’re out!

Since most of our trips are of a longer nature, we are almost always presented with a long term stay discount.  If not, I ask for it.  And if it’s what seems to be too low (eg a 10% discount for a month stay), I’ll ask for more.  There is lots of negotiating with these hosts, but at the same time, I try to be fair realizing they need to pay costs and make some money too.

I almost always choose the “Flexible Cancellation Policy” option when presented (usually anything less than a 30 night stay will offer this).  Life in the time of COVID is too unpredictable, and even prior to COVID, you just don’t know.  The only time we will book without this feature is if the listing options are very limited, but this rarely happens.  If the stay is over 30 nights which many of ours are, I try to get the host to confirm in writing that even though AirBNB has a standard rather strict policy on long term stay cancellations, they will still give me a flexible cancel policy.  I confirmed with AirBNB that if I get this in writing from the host, it must be honored.

Many AirBNB hosts list on additional sites like Booking.com or VRBO.  Sometimes I will find their listing and pricing on AirBNB and then try and find the same place on the other sites at a lower price.  This is very much hit or miss but worth a shot as AirBNB costs are definitely higher than the other sites.

When placing our booking via AirBNB, I include a message to the host that we’re frequent travelers as we do travel writing and reviews—which we do!!  Go to www.liveabroadreviews.com if you don’t believe me 😉.  This has on multiple occasions gotten us the “special treatment”—which I can’t lie—it feels good.  For others, perhaps just indicating that you like to travel and will often return to a place you’ve been if you like it enough will get a partial special treatment (perhaps just one piece of chocolate on your pillow upon arrival).

--And by the way, if you prefer hotels, there is now a HotelSlash that works the same way the auto one does above.  It’s a good option for the hotel lovers of the world at https://www.hotelslash.com/.

Flights—

UGGHH….so expensive and only going higher.  I spend much of my planning time in this area.  So here goes:

--I have no allegiance to any airline, I look for the best times and prices.  That said, we have frequent flyer accounts with all of the major airlines as they’re free and things do add up over time.

--We have signed up for credit cards with most of the large national airlines as it often saves us baggage fees and the sign up promotion for points often gets us a free flight.

--All of the aggregate search engines (Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, etc.) are similar, you can use any of them.  Many people just use the Google Flights feature https://www.google.com/travel/flights which works well too.  I’m not really married to any specific one of these.  Since we’re usually pretty flexible with our dates, I tend to use Kayak.com since they have an easy to read calendar showing dates of higher or lower prices

--While airlines always deny it, I do find that traveling on Mondays or Tuesdays tends to cost less than other days.  

--I sometimes find that two one way flights actually can be cheaper than a round trip.  Definitely hit or miss and the airlines try not to allow this to happen, but I’ve taken advantage of this in the past.  Just note that for either multi-city stops or using two one-ways, it can make things trickier for meeting connections, if the flight is cancelled, etc.  So a bit of dice rolling here, I would not do this during this peak summer travel season as an example.

--Some of the advertised private search tools are pretty good.  I’ve signed up for Scott’s Cheap Flights at https://scottscheapflights.com/ .  I’m on the “Limited” plan which is free as I’ve not realized a great deal of value yet—but this is because we have no real home airport.  For those of you with a home, you can sign up for free and indicate your home airport.  You are then emailed special offers from this airport.  It’s not superb, but I’ve seen some pretty good deals that I would have taken had I already been thinking of booking a flight to a certain city.  Another one I use is dollarflightclub.com.

--Now that there are no change fees on most flights, I’ll usually make sure that I book main cabin flights as the “basic economy” flights don’t have the no change fee feature.  As long as the carrier I’m using is a national type brand, I figure if I have to cancel the flight at some point I’ll at least have the credits and can use them in the future.  If I book on a specific airline that I may not use again (e.g Malta Air), then I’m less worried about the no change fee feature and may just go for the lowest cost.  This also allows us to book flights way in advance which is definitely a plus as tickets bought 6+ months earlier are almost always cheaper.  In fact, a rule of thumb is to buy during the opposite season (e.g. if you want a winter getaway, buy in the summer).  We buy our tickets generally 6-15 months in advance of our departure date.

We hope this helps!  It is a part-time job doing this planning but sometimes seeing it as a challenge to beat makes it fun (always a competition for Don).

Any questions?  Let us know in the comments or via email and we'll do our best to answer them.  For now, we'll continue our walk down Jersey memory lane and tell you all about it next time.  

As always, thanks for following along!

Don and Monica