(Travel) Knowledge is Power

I am not rich. A lot of people assume that I must have a lot of money because I travel so much. In all honesty, the biggest reason that I am able to travel as much as I do is not because I have a large amount of financial resources but because I have a large amount of information resources.

Knowing where to look is essential to finding deals. Understanding what you find in addition to good timing is essential to making those deals work for you.

Travel is one thing that appeals to everyone. It transcends the boundaries of space and time, of culture and class. While travel often seems out of reach to even those with the most amount of resources to help them achieve it, all it takes is a little desire and a little effort to figure out ways to make travel work for your schedule and budget. Knowing how to fit travel into your life is something that everybody wants, but not many people figure it out. It all hinges on the balance of time and money available to you. If you don't get a lot of vacation time, then the best thing may just be to accept that you have to take a shorter trip. But isn't a short trip better than not going at all? That has been my travel philosophy for the last several years, and it has taken me far across the world. Knowing how to fit trips into my schedule has blessed me with a robust travel resume, even if I have mostly spent weekends rather than weeks or months abroad. Travel is a choice. As long as anyone is willing to put in a little time and effort into finding the travel resources that work for them, travel can become easy and affordable.

Hiking to Devil's Bay at the Baths on Virgin Gorda, BVI

There really is an art to being able to consistently stay on top of the good deals and find deals that are actually useful to you. For instance, one day in early 2013, I woke up before 7am and decided to check The Flight Deal before going back to sleep. I found an AMAZING deal on American Airlines from Salt Lake City to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands for $140 roundtrip, including all taxes and fees. But I never would have purchased that ticket if my friend, Alicia, wasn't already in St. Thomas for an internship and was asking me to come visit her. I jumped on that deal and told all our mutual friends, and an hour later all the tickets went back to $600. We had a tiny window to capitalize on that deal, and so we did. Travel knowledge is nothing without the drive to take action. It helps if you have a short travel wish list written up with specific reasons why you want to go to those places. This helps a lot in deciding whether or not to take advantage of a deal when it comes your way.

It takes a certain amount of diligence and patience when it comes to figuring out what the best websites are and how to understand the information. You really have to take some time to understand how airlines work. A lot of deals come from fare wars where airlines attack certain flight routes at their competitor's hubs and other times deals just arise as a simple promotion. There is no "best" time to buy a plane ticket or find a deal because the factors that affect airline prices fluctuate so much and so often. The only way to find the absolute best deals is to check your travel resources daily, or even multiple times a day, and even then there is no guarantee that those prices will be the best.

Hanging out in the Virgin Islands

When I was in graduate school, I began looking up ways to find cheap travel, and I got into the habit of checking a handful of what I consider to be the most useful travel blogs for general information (like Million Mile Secrets and Mile Value) weekly. Eventually, as I learned more and more from reading, I discovered other resources that provide more detailed information and are tailored specifically to cheap flights rather than cheap travel (like the FlyerTalk Mileage Run Forum and The Flight Deal) daily, which can sometimes take knowing a little travel jargon to figure out. No matter how much I share my travel know-how with my friends, most of them are not on top of checking these sites as diligently as I am, which is why I am more than happy to post any amazing deals I find on Facebook. But without a friend to help nudge you in the direction of a good (and useful) sale, the travel information network can be quite overwhelming. I hope to make a little sense of it here for all of you.