5 Little-Known Ways to Save Money on Holiday Travel This Year

The holiday gift shopping season doesn’t traditionally kick off until Black Friday, but the hunt for holiday travel deals often starts much sooner. You may have already begun looking at flights and hotels for your upcoming trips, which is great.

But just passively checking prices might not lead to the savings you’d hoped for. You need some additional, lesser-known strategies to score the best holiday travel deals in 2024.

1. Consider all means of travel

Driving is the obvious solution if you’re only traveling an hour or two away while flying is most people’s preferred option when traveling longer distances. But those aren’t the only ways you can get from point A to point B.

Buses, trains, or even ferries could also be options depending on where you need to go. Sites like Rome2Rio can help you explore all of your options. They’ll also highlight the cheapest and fastest options so you can quickly identify the itinerary that best suits your needs.

2. Use the right travel rewards credit card

Travel rewards credit cards can help you save on flights and hotels and sometimes score useful perks, like access to airport lounges. Frequent flyers may prefer to go for a specific airline card for maximum perks on that airline. But a general travel rewards card could be a better fit if you want something that can benefit you on all types of purchases.

Check out the best travel credit cards we’ve found to start earning more rewards. Now could be the perfect time to open one of these if you plan to book a trip within the next 90 days.

When you look for travel deals online, your web browser stores data about your searches, known as cookies. This can influence what it shows you in later searches. It’s generally a good idea to look for travel deals in an incognito browser or after deleting your cookies.

It may not make a significant difference in the prices you see, but it doesn’t hurt to have a clean slate when looking at travel deals. It could turn up options you wouldn’t have seen in your regular browser, even if they’re not significantly cheaper.

4. Shop at the right time

The cheapest time to buy airline tickets depends on when you’re traveling and where you want to go. You can score cheap flights as early as 26 days before Thanksgiving, according to Google, but you probably don’t want to wait any longer than that. For Christmas, it’s best to book even earlier — at least 36 days in advance and possibly even longer.

Those traveling internationally are best off looking for flights at least 50 days in advance of when they plan to travel. That means if you haven’t started looking for flights yet, it’s time to start shopping.

5. Be flexible

Flexibility is an underrated money-saving trait when it comes to holiday travel. If you’re locked into a specific airport on a specific date with a specific arrival window, you’ll have far fewer choices than someone who’s willing to consider all airports within a certain radius of their destination, several departure and arrival dates, and possible layovers over a nonstop flight.

Traveling on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday can score you more affordable prices, according to Google, and accepting at least one layover could reduce your costs by 25%. But it’s ultimately up to you to decide what you’re comfortable with.

Even following the above tips, traveling for the holidays may not necessarily be cheap. But even if you only manage to keep a few dollars in your savings account, that’s something to celebrate.