Ultimate Travel Hacks Collection

Choose the flight that fits your needs best

It seems that everyone is obsessed with low-cost airlines and desperately search for the cheapest flight possible. Although this option is perfect for short-distance journeys, there are several things you have to consider before joining the general excitement.

• First of all, think about your luggage. Most of the low-cost airlines have very strict policies telling you how many bags can you take with and how much can each of it weighs.
• If the luggage is not one of your points of concern, check the airport you are going to arrive at as it can be located really far away from the city center. The commute to your hotel and historical sights can take a lot of time and money.
• Don’t forget about the connecting flights. Sometimes you have to spend long hours at the airport waiting for your flight or even spend the whole night there.

Be careful with the ratings of some hotels

Choosing a place to stay while traveling can give you a real headache. Every hotel looks nice on the internet but once you get there it turns out to be pretty disappointing. To avoid this, read the reviews from real tourists and look at the photos they’ve recently made. TripAdvisor seems to be rather convenient and trustworthy for these purposes.

Plan how to get from the airport to your hotel

In case you don’t want to pay for a taxi and would like to save some money, find out the possible ways of getting to your hotel. Often enough, there are multiple buses or city trains that can simplify this task for you.

Learn useful phrases

Communication is also quite important. It’s better to learn some key phrases to feel more convenient. For example, if you’re in Spain and want to get your order a bit faster, you just need to add “Cuando pueda” – when you can – at the end of your sentence. That will do the trick. There are a lot of foreign words that can help you feel more confident while traveling. If you have a friend that is a professional translator or just a polyglot, as him for some piece of advice.

Get information on taxes and leaving tips

In some countries you’ll find that there’s a special amount of money you need to add to each price tag, in others, you will be charged to pay a city tax for staying at a hotel. It’s nice to know about such things before your trip and avoid some possible misunderstandings. One more point to keep in mind is leaving tips at restaurants and bars. In some places, you will find them included in your bill, in some you won’t. Make sure to know how much tip to leave (5%? 10%? or more?)

Have the necessary information not only on your phone

We all know how great it is to use all the applications on the phone while traveling. But what if something happens to it (it gets stolen/you lose it/the battery runs out and there’s no way to charge it)? Don’t rely exclusively on the gadgets and have the physical copies of your tickets, travel guides, maps, and booking papers with you.

Keep the weather forecast in mind while packing

Especially if you’re going to a country with an unstable climate. Make sure to take some warm clothes with you even if you’re traveling to some hot places as it might get much colder at night time. It’s easy to check the air and water temperatures on the web so don’t skip this point in your list.

Think about your playlist for the road

Nothing gets you more into the right traveling mood than a good playlist of the right songs. If you’re going to Paris you simply have to listen to some romantic French songs to make your heart sing. Now finding the right tracks for your journey has become as easy as never. Thanks to the recent cooperation of TripAdvisor and Google Play, you can find the ready lists for a lot of destinations. Choose the one you need and enjoy!

Always have some snacks in your backpack

If you don’t know when and where you’ll have your next meal, it’s always a good idea to have some snacks with you. I’ve learned it the hard way backpacking in Peru. There are places with no one around and you have to keep walking for another 10 kilometers to find something that looks like civilization.

Read the testimonials and ask questions

Getting prepared for the trip, don’t ignore the travel groups you can find on Facebook and numerous forums you can come across on the web. People often discuss the question you have and give comprehensive answers to them.

Make a plan to visit little-known places

Don’t focus only on famous places every tourist has to visit. As a rule, there are a lot of people, high prices, and overrated sights. Try to find some cities nearby that have a long history and are as beautiful as the popular ones everybody wants to see. In countries like Italy, you can enjoy visiting almost every little town or village and get a lot of positive emotions. In fact, it can be far more exciting than visiting Pisa, for example.

Think about your daily meals

Eating at a restaurant every day is quite costly. If you don’t plan to spend a lot of money on your food, think about your daily meals in advance. Maybe you should look for the accommodation options with a small kitchen or choose a hotel with supermarkets nearby. Some of the special offers and discount coupons can be the perfect way of saving money.

Don’t let local laws get you into trouble

Get acquainted with the local legal system and read carefully all the rules you should follow. If you rent a car, make sure to check what road signs can be different in the country of your destinations and what other restrictions are there.

Download the apps you might need

God save the technological advancements! You can download an app for any kind of situation. Have a map of the city you’re going to, bus and train timetables, currency converter, and anything else you might use while traveling.

Book tickets for popular sights in advance

Doing so will save you money and time. In most of the cases, you won’t have to stand in those endless lines waiting for your turn to get astonished by the beauty of an ancient church. You can book your tickets on the web and print them out. Even if there is no English version of a site, it’s easy to understand what to do to book them.

Avoid bank fees

You can consider the option of signing up for a credit card that has no transaction fees even if you use an ATM machine somewhere abroad. Losing a dollar or two on each transaction can seem like not such a big deal, but then you’ll see the major impact it has on your expenditures.