There’s a lot of outdated travel tips and info to be found, with plenty of advice that’s either been dispelled or proven inaccurate.
So we’ve identified many of the more common travel myths and want to set the record straight to help you find cheap flights and travel deals.
- The ‘magic hour’ – for a long time people thought the best deals existed on a particular day at a certain time, such as Tuesday at 2 p.m. False.
- Fare matching – some have believed that all airlines would match each others airfare sales. False.
- Round trip required – Or stay over on a Saturday. False. It was true at one time, but you can now purchase one-way fares for exactly half of the lowest round-trip fare.
- Clearing the cookies of your browser, or using Incognito. False. More info.
- Many have believed that booking with airline websites directly would always gets you the best fares. False. If only it were true. There are many Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s) to choose from, and they typically have better deals than the airlines on average. It pays to check around.
- The All-in-one solution. It doesn’t exist. There is no one stop shop for everything, and your alternative options have everything to do with departure and destination. Once again, it pays to check around.
- Predicting airline pricing is an educated guess at best. You can not predict prices for airlines (although some like to think they can). The industry is fairly advanced with their pricing models, and periodically changes fares. In some cases it can be several times per day. Also, a destination that was hot last year might be luke warm this year and travellers are now more keen to visit one place over another. Pricing is often dynamic, and relies on many factors. Some of these can include weather, events, seasonality, competitor prices, demand, price of oil, distance, empty middle seats, fees, profiling, airport capacity, For these reasons and more, airline pricing is sophisticated, but not predictable. Airlines tend to price tickets “as much as the customer and market will bear” as it’s in their best interest. Low bookings? Have a seat sale. Reaching the threshold to turn a profit for a flight? Sale is over.
- Book at least 3 weeks or more for the best savings. This one is actually true in many cases. Airlines tend to start their prices low and gradually increase them, so if you can book far in advance, it’s usually to your advantage.
- Booking your flight on a weekday gets you the best deals. False. It’s entirely possible to get great airfare deals on the weekend.
- Travel reviews are reliable. False. Take them as cautionary advice but try to do your own due diligence at the same time.
- There’s a secret word that you can say to a gate agent to receive a first class upgrade. This one is a fave. False.
- It’s possible to save money by purchasing airfare at the last minute. False, but true at one time.
- Budget airlines are terrible. False. Without naming names, some can be, but at the same time, many are not.
- Travel credit cards are bad. False. It’s how you use them. In fact, there’s many great travel rewards to be found when signing up.
- Europe is expensive; South America is cheap. False. We’ve seen many cheap flights to Europe, and this is one of the bigger travel myths. There are flight deals to be found where Europe is very comparable in price to South America.
Let’s also look at a few other travel myths;
- Sleep on the plane to avoid jetlag – False. It isn’t lack of sleep, but adjusting to time zone of when you’re awake/asleep.
- Duty free means bargains – False. It just means it isn’t taxed.
- The best deals are only on travel sites – False. Lots of deals are found on hotel and airline sites.
- Spain is just like Mexico, kangaroos are everywhere in Australia, the French are rude, Arabic countries are dangerous – False, false, false. Be smart, travel safe. Don’t believe stereotypes, do your homework before you go.
- Guidebooks know best – False. Once again, do your homework before you go.
- Traveling can be expensive – False. There’s lots of ways to find cheap tickets and hotels deals. CheapOFlights make it easy.