The best way to buy is buying qualitatively for less. Whether it be for shoes, bags or similar commodities, there’s hardly more joy than buying them at cheaper prices for the same quality.
But the search for quality and cheap shoes or bags is usually long and frustrating just as it is in the case of booking cheap flights online.
However, these five simple ways will help you buy flights at the cheapest rates that they can come with no stress and in no time. Remember, you should only consider flight book once your visa is ready!
Search with Private Browsing
You might have wondered why every time you revisit an airline website for a particular airfare, the price doesn’t only change but also increase.
You might have even doubted yourself and ruled that you were wrong to assume that price can increase that fast. No you weren’t wrong and yes they really do increase very fast!
What happens is that the cookie on your browser is always saving your information on every web page you visit, attempting to understand your browsing pattern and trying to enhance your browsing experience. That explains why you’d want to search for a word you’ve searched for in the past and the word is recommended to you by your browser or your previous setting (for example, setting language to English on a multilingual website) is presented to you when you revisit a website.
The website can always access the saved information and work with them. In the case of flight websites, they use that information against you, forcing you to buy an airfare fast by increasing the rate every time you check back.
To end all the harassment, simply browse in private. With this, no browsing information is saved and no website is monitoring your browsing.
Simply press Control and Shift keys together then press ‘P’ to start browsing in private on Mozilla Firefox browser or Internet Explorer browser or press Control and Shift keys together then press ‘N’ for browsing in private in Google Chrome, Opera or Safari browser.
Whenever you browse with any other browser on your PC or any of the aforementioned browser on your phone, simply check the menu of your browser to select the option of browsing in private.
Check for Cheapest Travel Date
Some days are cheaper than others when it comes to flight booking. Prices of flights fluctuate on a daily basis and the margin between the lowest and the highest rates in a month is surprisingly wide. About N39,800 wide.
Another way to book cheap flights is to visit a travel website and keep selecting each day of the month as date of departure to see which is favourable and study their cost pattern. Any travel website should be able to help you do this quick research. But a quicker and dependable check could be made on Skyscanner or Google Flight. Better still, you could download Hopper mobile app from Google Playstore to help you see dates when airfares are cheapest.
Another alternative is using a reputable online booking agent such as flyibat and Wakanow. Interestingly, Skyscanner and Google Flight have the feature of helping you checking a whole month to see the cheapest travel date.
Get Airfare Alerts for Free
Remember that airfare fluctuate on the daily and it is most unlikely that you will be able to follow the trend?
So, simply subscribe to travel websites that thrive on sharing information about airfares and travelling to monitor airfare fluctuations. Skyscanner and Cheap Air are highly recommended.
You can subscribe for airfare alerts on Skyscanner by searching for a flight then clicking on the green ‘Get Price Alerts’ button on the left side of the page.
Or, simply click here to subscribe airfare alerts from Cheap Air. Most Nigerian online booking agency does not have price alert but they make up for it with newsletter subscription. If you want deals that are targeted at Nigerians, you can subscribe for Flyibat, Wakanow and Travelstart newsletter to keep up with different promo deals.
No Holiday Travel
You may be tempted. You may be begged. But please don’t make the mistake of booking for a flight on a holiday. At least not when you want a cheap flight.
Research conducted by travel experts have shown that airfares on holidays are more expensive than on ordinary days. And you can easily verify this by following tip number two.
Travel Agents Are Your Friend
Yes, you want to save cost as much as you can but when it comes to sniffing out cheap flights, nobody does it better than travel agents because of two big reasons. One, it is their job and two, it is their job!
What you may do, however, is to run a background check and present your findings to a travel agent. He will naturally want to impress you by getting an airfare that is cheaper. But if he doesn’t, he will get you a price that is in the range of what you have given him– which is not so bad by the way!
There they are. With them, you can be assured of booking the next flight as cheap as can be booked.
Thank you for your time and ‘happy booking’.
