What Kind Of Traveler Am I?
What kind of traveler am I?
Like anything you do, it’s important to gain an
understanding of what you hope to achieve or get out of any experience. There are three basic types of travelers, the
business traveler, the specific destination traveler and the experience
traveler. We are going to discuss the specific destination traveler and the
experience traveler.
The specific destination traveler is the traveler who, like
the title states, wants to go to a specific place at a specific time and see
specific things. This is the most restrictive and expensive way to travel. By
choosing this type of travel you must understand you will pay more than the
experience traveler. The more restrictions you place on your trip, the harder
it will be to save money. One of the ways you can save money on this type of
travel is called repositioning. On my most recent trip to Europe, I practiced a
type of repositioning.
Repositioning involves researching fares and airlines that
fly to the specific destination you want to travel to. For example, if you want
to fly to Paris and you prefer Delta Airlines, The flight to Paris from
Cincinnati might be $950 each for 2 totaling $1900 for a roundtrip flight on
your dates. You check the prices from larger airports with hubs i.e Atlanta, Chicago,
NY, Charlotte, Newark, Boston an you will find the fare for $450 each or $900
total. You can fly a low-cost carrier to any of these cities for under $100.
Repositioning to save money on a specific destination.
On my most recent trip to Europe I practiced a backwards
type of repositioning. I have actually done it a few times. My wife and I love
Italy and find ourselves going back over and over but because her vacation
schedule and the fact that we still have a school aged child we tend to travel
during the summer months, which are notoriously the most expensive flights of
the year. This year I researched flights to Milan from Cincinnati during the
specific dates we needed. The average cost of a round trip Main Cabin ticket to
Milan during my dates was about $1500 or $3000 for the two of us for a twelve-day
turnaround. What I was able to find by “backwards” repositioning was roundtrip
flights to Dublin Ireland for $850 each or $1700 and hop flights from Dublin to
Milan for $75 each or $150 and hop flights from Nice France to Dublin for $50 each
or $100. I now have my twelve-day European vacation airfare for a total of
$1950!!!! Saving over $1000 dollars. Remember the 200,000 miles I have on
Capital One Venture X? My flights are now free……These flights are free on a 1/1
redemption of my miles through the Capital One purchase eraser, this is the
worst possible use of my miles as they can be worth much more when, sometimes
5,8/1 when transferred to partner airlines and redeemed as reward travel but that’s
a little more advanced and several post from now.
There are a couple benefits for us using Dublin as our
gateway to Europe. Neither one of us likes the 11-12 hour flight to Italy. The
flight to Dublin is 7.5 or less anywhere east of Chicago. We love spending our
last night before traveling home at a nice hotel in Dublin, we always use the
same one for a nice dinner, a good night’s sleep and fly out the next morning.
The other wonderful thing about Dublin is that the United State has a pre
clearance customs center in the Dublin Airport, meaning you are done with
customs before you ever hit the shores of the United States. If you have ever
been caught in those lines, you realize how valuable this is. This would be a
great place for me to tell you about Global Entry, worth its weight in gold,
but that will be another post!
Are you an Experience Traveler? I want to be and try so very
hard. An experience traveler is free with their time and they don’t care where
they go or when as long as they are going. There are so many resources
available to this type of traveler and the primary two are Google and Kayak explore
functions. These two search engines can show you the cheapest flights from a
particular airport to anywhere in the world. You simply find a cheap destination
on the map where the price is acceptable and then go to the vendor site to book
it. If you can do this, travel can be incredibly cheap. My goal is not to
choose the destination but to let the destination pick me and then plan a trip
around it! If you follow this type of travel plan one vacation a year becomes
at least two if not more.
I subscribe to a low cost travel engine called Pomelo Travel
that weekly sends me incredible travel deals. This week for example is :
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I hope this helps you figure out what kind of traveler you
are! And by doing so a few ways to save a little money on those trips you have
been putting off!
I learned a lot of this information from trial and error but
I was able to put it to work after I bought the JGOOT book and joined the
facebook groups!
Book:
https://www.jgoot.com/tr/2/3961435/7593048574/23570411/1664080977e6e3032e2adaddfb79d2a8312092a38
Free Videos:
https://www.jgoot.com/tr/2/3961435/7593048574/23570412/1664080977e6e3032e2adaddfb79d2a8312092a38
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