Cheap tours: where to look and how to buy? Our 10 rules!

Pss, do you need a tour? Take a look - here we will tell you how to get it as painlessly as possible for the budget. How to find a hot tour and where is it cheaper to buy a regular one?

VK groups and telegram channels are, of course, good, but too fleeting and momentary. How to find the cheapest tours not only for today-tomorrow, but also for a week-month-year in advance?

Here are our instructions from 8 tour trips, which included Thailand for 60,000, Greece for 26,000, and Spain for 35,000! Everything - for two and in 2018-2019, and not when the dollar was thirty 🙂

Do you read Telegram? In our Howtrip Lowcost channel, we daily discount promotional tours and air tickets, from which an inexpensive vacation begins :)

Buying a tour online

If you are used to visiting travel agency offices, it's time to try an alternative - a tour aggregator. If you haven't looked into the nearest Pilgrim-Travel yet, is it necessary?

Buying a tour online is easy, convenient and modern. Everyone has been independently booking hotels on Booking and flights on Skyscanner for a long time, it's time for ready-made travel!

Where to look for cheap tours?

• Travelata
• Level.Travel
• Onlinetours

Their idea is extremely simple: services analyze the bases of tour operators, compare prices and show available tour options, ranking them by cost or rating.

Advantages:

1. Search tours by all tour operators, moreover, reliable. With such a scale, no budget tour goes unnoticed.
2. Prices directly from tour operators... No additional payments for office rent, employee benefits, tea with cookies.
3. Really inexpensive packagesthat even the cheapest travel agencies won't offer. Search engines will point you to Turkey for 30,000 for two, well, because they are programmed that way, but travel agents are programmed for profit. Which increases with the amount deposited by the client.
4. Your own choice... And do not be afraid of this phrase! Calmly study the hotel reviews and be guided by the prices - then the worm will definitely not swallow "what if there was something more profitable / closer to the sea?"
5. All conditions for the hunt for the burning: saw + immediately bought = in time 🙂

This is me - on the edge of Europe, in Portugal. It turns out that you can do this: take a tour to Spain for 10 days and fly on your own for 2 days in Porto 🙂

Additional pluses:

+ Documents - directly to e-mail
+ 24-hour support service and offices in major cities
+ Safe card payment
+ Installment plan / the ability to split the payment into two stages

What is the best search engine for tours - not to say, all three are worth seeing. We noticed that on LevelTravel, for example, the list of departure cities is wider, on Travelata you can book a tour with a discount using a promotional code, and Online Tours always displays the final price with a fuel surcharge (if any).

Ranking of cheap countries by seasons

It is useful to know where the cheapest vouchers are sold. For each season, there are several mass destinations that differ in budget. Here is a short rating of cheap countries and the minimum cost of the tour in 2021 (7 nights, 2 people):

The price is indicated for one person when buying a tour for two

Smart search for tours across all tour operators

Where to look for tours - we have determined, now the question is - how? First, use the smart search for tours: online aggregators allow you to set parameters that will filter out uninteresting offers.

Let's say you intend to buy the cheapest tour, just to get out abroad. It is logical that a 5 * hotel on all inclusive is not included in your plans, so put the appropriate checkbox in front of the filters "Star rating / Hotel class" and "Food". You can also play with the distance to the sea, beach type, rating, etc.

Promo codes

Everything is clear and understandable here: from time to time, search engines delight with promotional codes. At the moment, this is Travelata - a site for cheap tours, which makes them - tours - a little more profitable.

• UAF300howtrip - a coupon for 300 rubles for any tours from 20,000
• UAF500howtrip - a coupon for 500 rubles for any tours from 40,000
• AFT2000howtrip - a coupon for 2000 rubles for tours to Turkey from 100 000

Low price calendar and flexibility in dates

Travelata and Onlinetours have a handy widget - a low price calendar with which you can catch cheap tours. It appears after you click the "find" button and is a graph of the cost of vouchers for several days before and after the desired date.

Be sure to find out about the adjacent numbers. Clearly from the screenshot above: the difference between departure on June 25 and 26 is ≈15,000 rubles!

Level.Travel also has a calendar, but of a different plan: it displays the best prices for tours to a selected country 4 months in advance and by duration:

So, in order to choose a voucher optimally, flexibility in travel dates is desirable, at least a day or two.

Departure from Moscow or neighboring cities

Usually we fly from Moscow - from here tickets and tours are cheaper. But, for example, we flew from Kazan to Greece for 10 nights, as well as to Dubai for 5 days for 33,000 rubles

It's a shame, but true: inexpensive tour packages for regions, especially distant ones, are quite rare. But cheap tours from Moscow are quite natural, because the development of air traffic is decisive.

If it is not difficult for you to get / fly to the capital, then you can think about it. We often take a voucher with a flight from Moscow and get there by train (and the amount is still an order of magnitude lower than from Kazan).

Well, if none of the Russian Railways, Pobeda and BlaBlaKar help, look for the cheaper tours in the nearest large cities (St. Petersburg, Samara, Novosibirsk). But do not forget to evaluate whether this way is worth saving your comfort (especially with a child)?

Flexibility in directions

Conservativeness is good, but sometimes it can be expensive. And if you once again decided to buy a ticket to Turkey, but the price hinted that something was wrong, we advise you to change your priorities.

• Look for "spare" options among traditionally budget directions (list above)
• When choosing a resort, study the prices for each (the site itself will suggest the name)

For example, cheap tours to Greece in 2021 are much more common than in previous years; and for the cost of an average Turkish hotel of 5 stars, you can take an excellent Greek "five". Yes, it will not be all inclusive, but breakfast + dinner, but do you feel the difference in the level? In addition, it is very simple to issue a Schengen area; and if it is open, then there are no obstacles at all 🙂

In general, shuffle countries and places on the search engines. Fortunately, there is where to fly from Russia (and even without a visa - as many as 89 countries).

Our hotel in Greece according to the fortune system (a tour for 11 nights cost us 27,000 rubles)

Low season for holidays

From our experience, the most effective life hack of how to buy a cheap tour is to choose the low season. More precisely, the off-season is when the weather is already or is still ok, but there are no crowds on the beaches / streets, and the prices are not inflated.

• It is cheaper to travel to European sea countries and Turkey in May and the second half of September-October. Works for both beach and sightseeing. For example, here is our article about Turkey in December (and even at this time it is good there)
• It is more economical to fly to Thailand, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and even the Maldives in May-June and September-October (except for the Maldives)
• And in the UAE - in December (until the 25th)

We somehow leafed through the whole forum, finding out if it is normal in Tae at the end of May. Everyone, as one, frightened by showers, but somehow unconvincingly, in words. Well, and a cheap tour (Phuket, 10 days, 3 * with breakfast, 60,000 for two), in the end, did its job. The off-season May island - without tourists and, surprisingly, without rains - we liked much more than the January one (when a similar voucher costs 90,000 rubles).

Photo from our trip to Krabi province in Thailand

Early booking

Early booking saves, but not always 100%. It is guaranteed to be profitable when you need to buy a cheap tour to a luxury or wildly popular hotel, which by the date of departure will stop or skyrocket in price.

With simpler hotels, early booking is triggered when and how. Based on the reviews of tourists, it happens that it is negative. We took the above tour to Thailand on early booking 5 months in advance, but a week before the trip it cost only 2 thousand more.

By the way, it is approximately six months in advance. Summer Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and others like them "open" in February. Winter resorts - Tai, Vietnam, Dominican Republic - in June-July.

Last minute deals

The cheapest tours are last minute. Tour operators "throw away" them a few days before departure in order to somehow recoup the cost. Let's tell right away where to look: at Level.Travel and Onlinetours. Correct the input data and choose (of course, if any)!

If you didn’t rush to the online distance, where to buy hot tours, if you’re lucky, you can do it once or twice, know: this is still a lottery. First, hotels are usually not sold out for a specific reason (guess what?). And secondly, last-minute tours appear not so often, and it is better to count on them for a spontaneous trip, but definitely not for a planned one.

Our charter to Rhodes from Coral Travel is the main plus of the direct flight

Tours on the system "fortune"

Fortune is for adventurous and picky optimists. Well, or for superchip trips. Discovered, like a last minute ticket, is not always and not everywhere.

In a nutshell, a tour fortune is when you only know the resort, the duration, the stardom of the hotel and the type of food. For example, 7 nights in Kemer in a 4 * hotel, all inclusive. The hotel itself will become known upon arrival in the country. Read more about Fortune on the example of Turkey here.

What's the point? In exchange for such mystery, you get the cheapest tour - vouchers to all "certain" hotels cost 3+ thousand more.

How to find fortune?

• Go to Travelata, LevelTravel or Online Tours
• Drive in direction (ideally a resort)
• Rank by price
• Select the required stardom with a tick - fortune, if available, should be displayed in the first positions

Before choosing and buying a tour, take a look at the available hotel options from a tour operator offering Fortune. Some of them will be settled! Plus, there is an opportunity to knock down the already low price with one of the promotional codes above 🙂

You can take excursions on site yourself - we are looking for Tripster (3 hours on a private yacht in Barcelona cost us 5,000 rubles for two!)

Our Tips

• If you travel abroad more often than once a year: think about bank cards for travel, refunding up to 7% of the purchase price of the tour / tickets / hotels
• Some tour operators can sell both a traditional tour (flight + accommodation + insurance), and "land" - only accommodation. Don't worry, you won't stumble upon this by chance; it is necessary to select a separate column "only hotel" in the window of a particular hotel. Sometimes land is cheaper than booking on Booking
• An important reminder: the cheapest tours abroad do not always = quality. Still, you have to pay with something: comfort, food, uncomfortable flight
• There are no cheap tour operators, there are economy offers in different directions. Therefore, when searching for a voucher, online aggregators that process all tour operators and all resorts win

Well, will you try to find a tour yourself? 🙂 Share in the comments how budgetary you are and where you are!