Staying Fit
Once upon a pre-pandemic time, making vacation plans at the last minute often meant scoring a deal on a discounted hotel room or tour. Now, strong demand for travel — a recent survey by the planning website The Vacationer found nearly 85 percent of Americans plan to travel this summer, up nearly 5 percent from last year — suggests procrastinators won’t be rewarded.
But don’t get discouraged; get smart. The following are strategies for how, when and where to travel to stretch your vacation dollar this summer.
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Flying or driving, transportation is a major travel expense that warrants careful research.
“Inflation is putting pressure on everything globally, and the airline business is without exception,” says Brett Keller, chief executive officer at the online agency Priceline. “Even the high cost of the snacks you’re eating on board your flight contributes to price hikes.”
Priceline predicts the average domestic round-trip ticket this summer will cost $450; the average price in 2022 was $378, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Going.com, a membership service for inexpensive airfares formerly known as Scott’s Cheap Flights, puts the ideal window for finding domestic flight deals at one to three months in advance. If you’ve missed that, try searching more creatively.
Going suggests investigating open-jaw flights in which you depart from one city and return to another. So, you might consider flying from Miami to San Francisco and returning from Oakland to Fort Lauderdale, or any similar combination. Click “nearby airports” or use the “multi-city” option on flight search engines like Skyscanner, Kayak or Google Flights to get a robust list of choices.
