The Tricks To Traveling Outside The Country or Vacationing Cheap

A friend, who is a car dealer, is helping me get a car. My current 1999 Camry is making my life difficult, throwing up one fault after the other. He would be bidding for a car on copart.com and shipping it from USA to Lagos. So I decided to have some extensive clear-all-doubts meeting with him. 

After we discussed about the car, the number of weeks it would take to reach me, the total amount and if this direct buying is truly better/safer than buying already-in-Lagos tokunbo car, we got talking about vacation and traveling outside the country. 

He asked me where we went for our honeymoon -- Senegal -- and how much it costed. It costed us N182,000/person for a return flight to Dakar and the hotel was about N24,000/night. I thought it was a good deal as all the destinations outside West Africa cost more than double. And then came the shocker from him.

He has been flying to Dubai and South Africa way cheaper than we paid to Dakar. In fact, not too long ago, he took his family -- he + wife + little son -- to Jo'burg for N360,000 return flight. All three of them! I think it was Ethiopian Airline. And Dubai. He goes there cheaper than one typical pays to go to Ghana. He then explained to me how he does the bargain hunting.

He starts first with using TravelStart to get details of cheapest airline for the date and destination he has in mind. Also, he explained which months of the year are typically cheaper for most vacationing destinations.

You then note the cheapest airlines for that route and date. In the example screenshot above for a Lagos to Dubai return trip for March 2019: Egyptair is the cheapest followed by Rwandair and Ethiopian Airline. 

You go to their websites and make the search there. This will show you if there are cheaper flights around that period so instead of going on March 5 at $300 you can switch to March 4 at $230. Then most foreign airlines do special price drop promos.

He says he typically spend days and weeks hunting for airline promos and noting which airlines fly cheap to his preferred destinations. Still, if you are okay with flying to London at the same price you would have gone to Accra then you might not need to hunt for days or weeks. But if you are looking for crazy irresistible deals that make flying out of the country cheaper than some local flights, then you should start monitoring popular foreign airlines weekly to get in when they do special price promos.

For me though, vacationing just got cheaper and more doable factoring that I am now we. We can now have a special fund/account for promo vacation. When it reaches a good amount, we start hunting for deals.

Also, he showed me how to use booking.com to pick excellent and very affordable hotels. Plus tips on how to make the most of my vacation without paying for any expensive tour or package.