Travel expert shares the ‘absolute best time to book flights’ for a holiday | Travel News | Travel
The money experts at MoneyNerd spoke to travel pros to find out how Britons can save on the price of a holiday. One shared the “absolute best time to book flights”.
Book flights as early as possible
James Chapman, consultant at Travel Counsellors, said: “The absolute best time to book flights is as early as possible.
“The earlier the better, especially if it’s a long haul. Flight tickets are sold off in sections called classes and each time enough seats are sold in a class, it moves on to the next class which increases the price.
“The biggest impact recently on flights has been exchange rates and taxes. It’s not very exciting, but in my experience, the changes in prices don’t have much to do with the day of the week, it’s much more to do with the economy at the time you book.”
Unless tourists are travelling at a very out of peak time of year, flight prices are likely to only get more expensive as the travel date nears.
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Tourists should book as soon as possible, so it could even be worth looking at tickets for Christmas or next Easter now. For this summer, tourists could try looking flexibly.
Flight comparison websites often offer the option of looking at where’s cheapest to fly on any given travel date.
Use flight comparison sites
Reena Kaur, travel deal curator at Catch a Gem, said: “Always use different comparison sites when searching for flights.
“The top ones include Google Flights, KIWI and Skyscanner. These sites all have exclusive prices that they are able to offer searchers and most of the time they are the best places to go first when looking for an offer rather than going direct.
Flight comparison sites are a great place to start a search as tourists can quickly see prices from different airlines.
However, tourists should be careful of hidden charges if they book their holiday flights through a third party website.
Some third party websites will charge tourists more to change their booking or if the flight is cancelled so it’s important to check first.
Flight comparison sites may also not include baggage prices in the initial cost so it’s important to factor that in when holiday browsing.
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Tourists could also try looking for the hotel on other booking platforms to check they’re getting the best price for their stay.
Use a travel card for currency
James added: “I always travel with a specialist travel card that allows for free withdrawals abroad, which then if you select local currency at the cash machines, uses the current exchange rates and avoids any additional charges.
“There are now lots of accounts with cards like this on the market, so if you haven’t got one, I would recommend researching which would be the best for you and start saving your money going forward.”
A currency card is usually the best way to spend money overseas and tourists will avoid being hit with any extortionate exchange fees.
