40 travel hacks to help you get the best and cheapest holidays

We’re heading into peak holiday booking season, after which it will be peak holiday taking season. With that in mind, we thought we’d offer you some travel hacks to save you time, effort and money when you’re going from here to there.

1. While you think of it, take a pic of the important pages of your passport and anyone you might be travelling with and quickly email them to yourself. Hopefully it will be a waste of effort, but if your passport is ever lost or stolen it will save you time and money, as getting emergency travel documents issued is much easier if you have all the details to hand.

2. In fact, while you’re at it, send pics of more stuff - your EHIC card, your travel insurance, your hotel and flight bookings – to yourself and then create a travel folder where it all sits. When you come home, delete all the mails you no longer need, to stop the folder getting needlessly clogged up.

3. Get a European Health Insurance Card if you don’t have one, or if the one you got years ago has lapsed – they have to be renewed every five years. The card will allow you to be treated like a citizen of whatever EU country you are in, should you fall ill. And don’t ever pay for the card. Some sites will try charging for the service, but it is free through the official site, ehic.ie.

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4. Buy your travel insurance as soon as you book your holiday. Around 40 per cent of claims are made before travel, with illness and death the most likely reasons for cancelled holidays.

5. Generally speaking, airfares climb incrementally as the date of departure comes close, with aviation folk saying booking a flight six to eight weeks before departure is the way to get the best deal.

6. We have come across a theory which suggests that airlines’ automated systems dump blocks of unsold seats on Wednesdays between midnight and 1am in the time zone of their home city. So if you are flying to Vietnam, say, and are looking for the cheapest deal, look at 5pm Irish time on Tuesday evenings. We can’t say if it works, but it is worth a try.

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7. There are other theories out there when it comes to booking. Online rumours suggest that the more you visit an airline’s website to look up a particular fare, the higher the prices go, because cookies (the small pieces of computer code that track us) know what we are interested in. If an airline knows we’re keen on a particular fare, it might assume we’re willing to pay more. Try using the incognito or private-browsing mode and clear your cookies. It won’t cost you anything and might save you money. Airlines repeatedly rubbish this theory.

8. Whatever about cookies, the day you fly can certainly make a massive difference to the price you pay. Most holidaymakers fly at weekends, while business travellers tend to fly Mondays and Fridays. So the cheapest days to fly are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Package holidays starting on those days are also considerably cheaper.

9. If possible, travel in the shoulder season. May and September will always be cheaper for most destinations in Europe. The weather is often more pleasant too.

10. When travelling anywhere, don’t just pay attention to Irish school holidays: look at Britain, Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands too.

The days of getting cheaper flights when booking return flights are long gone, particularly if you are flying short-haul

11. Explore all avenues when booking and get prices from travel agents, booking platforms and hotels directly. It may take some time, but you can’t put a price on the smugness you get from knowing you beat the system by shopping around.

12. Sign up for alerts with a flight aggregator such as Momondo or Sky Scanner. They can be excellent if you plan to go to a particular location, but are not tied to set dates. You get notifications if there are price drops on flights to your chosen destination.

13. Before booking a seat, particularly when flying long haul, visit seatguru.com to find out where you might want to end up.

14. When booking, you don’t have to take the same airline to and from your destination. The days of getting cheaper flights when booking return flights are long gone, particularly if you are flying short-haul. It is quite possible that it will be cheaper to fly out with Aer Lingus and home with Ryanair or vice versa.

15. When flying long-haul, widen your horizons when it comes to departure airports. Don’t just look at Irish and British airports. Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt often have much better deals and can be very cheap to get to from here.

16. Consider all-inclusive. The upfront costs might seem pricey but in an era of spiralling inflation, booking and paying for an all inclusive in March could save you a few bob in September.

17. If you do go all-inclusive, choose wisely – make sure there is more than one restaurant and bar on the site, read the trip advisor reviews to get a sense of what the food might be like. Look at dedicated all-inclusive rather than ones that mix and match: they tend to be better equipped. And pick a resort that has multiple pools and other areas to keep you amused. Booking a bad all-inclusive is a surefire way to waste money and have a miserable holiday experience.

18. There are more than 20 new routes from Dublin to destinations across Europe this year. New routes tend to be cheaper as they are not yet established. Either Aer Lingus, Ryanair or both are flying to Brindisi in the heel of Italy, Kos in Greece and Sardinia (long served by Ryanair but also now by Aer Lingus), so there might be value to be found there. Lanzarote in the summer months is also good value: as it can make money year round, it can afford to undercut some summer-only destinations for the months ahead.

19. If you can’t use your plane ticket for whatever reason, don’t automatically cancel. You’re entitled to a refund of taxes and charges if you don’t fly, but airlines impose scandalous admin charges for processing those refunds. If you don’t cancel, the airline might cancel the flight or change the departure time, giving you the chance of a full refund or re-booking.

Look at dedicated all-inclusive rather than ones that mix and match: they tend to be better equipped

20. Book your outward flight for the very early morning and your homeward flight last thing at night. You effectively get two more holiday days - but do your homework and find a place to store your bags, and make sure you have easy access to your swimsuits or summer clothes, so you are not wandering around in the crazy heat of a European summer dressed for an Irish winter and fighting over who carries the bags.

21. Tell your bank you are going away. It seems absurd that you have to let your bank know that you are on holidays, but we have heard far too many stories of banks pre-emptively stopping cards because they are being used in locations which the bank algorithms deem to be dodgy.

22. Packing is an art form that can be hard to master. One thing that is not hard to master is the move from folding your clothes into a suitcase to rolling them in. You can pack more in and it creases less.

23. Wear your bulkiest clothes while travelling. Contact lens cases are excellent liquid and cream holders if you are only going away for a short break. While they are small, they carry a surprising amount.

24. Buy bulkier, heavier items – towels, shower gels, sun creams – when you are overseas. Depending on where you are going, such things can be very cheap, and will save you space and money as you travel.

25. If you are really bad at packing, there’s an app for that. It’s called Pack Point and it promises to tell you what to pack based on where you are going, for how long and when. We told the app we were heading to Galway for a week in June, and among the essentials it suggested were all the clothes you might imagine, a “casual watch”, painkillers, earplugs, an eye mask, condoms, a camera and q-tips. It was a bit hit and miss, to be honest.

26. If you are struggling for space in your suitcase and want to bring more stuff, you could stuff a travel pillow with extra clothes. It will be pretty useless as a travel pillow, but you could probably squeeze several days worth of clothes into one. And (unless they’re reading this) the airline staff will never know what you’re up to.

27. If you are getting on a plane, be aware of what is expected of you. The rules can change. Anyone looking to bring a 10kg bag on a short-haul Aer Lingus flight must book a “carry-on bag with priority boarding” at a cost of €5.99. But 10kg bags can be checked in for free. If you show up at the boarding gate with your bag without paying in advance, you will be charged a €35 fee. Priority boarding with Ryanair gets you your 10kg on board bag for “free”, while if you check it in, it can cost between €12 and €25 depending on the time and distance of the flight. The pricing for the Excess baggage is €9 per each added kilogram. Oh, and it is worth noting that customers can pool or share their purchased baggage allowance with other passengers included in the same flight reservation when checking-in together. So if a reservation has two checked bags of 20kg, one of the bags could weigh 15kg and the other 25kg.

28. If you are driving to your departure airport – and always ask yourself if you would be better off taking a cab – make sure you pay for your parking well in advance. It will make a difference.

29. When you’re checking in bags, ask the staff to mark them “fragile”. Not only will it go some way to ensuring your bags are treated with a bit of tenderness, the fragile bags tend to be first onto the conveyor belt.

30. Use the fast-track lanes at airports at home and abroad, and investigate the lounge access. The former can take much of the stress out of the airport experience for less than a tenner per person, while the latter can make the experience beyond security much nicer.

Airports are more than just a place to start your journey. They are also vast shopping centres which are designed to get us to spend money

31. Never change money at an airport. It is a golden rule of travel that you will be ripped off.

32. Remember that airports are more than just a place to start your journey. They are also vast shopping centres which are designed to get us to spend money. Don’t make it easy for them. Bring reading material and download movies and television programmes. We’re not going to suggest you bring a packed lunch, but do invest the time and energy into things that will stave off boredom. A bored traveller is a spendy traveller.

33. Download the Google map for wherever you are going, so you don’t have to use your data or even have an internet connection when navigating yourself around the place. Just click on the map covering the place you are going, type “ok map” into the search bar, press download and you are good to go.

34. And while we’re on the topic, remember that Google Translate is your friend, your very smart friend. We love how it allows you to photograph text in a different language so it can translate it. It might stop you ordering callos in a Spanish restaurant.

35. Buy tickets in advance for the attractions you plan to see. It may save you money but it will definitely save you time as you won’t have to queue.

36. Don’t eat too near the iconic spots. A lovely lunch on Las Ramblas in Barcelona, or in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, or beside the Spanish Steps in Rome might seem like a great idea, but the food will not be as good as it might be and you will pay through the nose for the experience. Have a drink for sure, but save your big spending for places off the beaten track. Use your phone to find “places to eat near me” to make the best calls.

37. Many cities around Europe offer free access to museums on certain days and after certain times. Don’t leave it to chance, and do your homework before your make your visiting plans.

38. Do you need a car while overseas? Many people hire one without giving it too much thought, but with car hire prices spiralling in recent years, it could easily add more than €1,000 to the cost of a holiday. At least investigate alternatives. Public transport in Europe is very good and taxis can be very cheap.

39. If you are going to rent a car, consider renting one for only a portion of your break and by hiring the car away from the airport you will save money.

40. Resolve to enjoy the holiday, and to look forward to it for as long as you can. The cost of living crisis is grinding on and on, and it is nice to think that maybe for two weeks in the months ahead people could at least park their worries. And if you finances can’t stretch to a holiday this year, don’t beat yourself up about it. As with all crises, this too will pass, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

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Come fly with me . . . or would you be better off on the boat?

Is flying the best way to get from here to there? There are some destinations that can’t be reached by car and boat, but others are very accessible, and when we crunched the numbers they worked out substantially cheaper too.

Boating rather than flying does take time, so you will need to be zen-like about the journey and plan activities to keep children amused over the course of the 17 hours it takes to get from Rosslare to Cherbourg with Stena Line – a company which has added a new ferry to its summer schedule and sales to Ireland from France and back again six days a week at high season.

A cabin where you can sleep sway at least nine of those hours is essential and all the prices quoted below include a cabin that that sleep four.

First up, there is the flying option.

A family of four travelling to Nantes in July will spend €85 on parking at Dublin Airport, while flights for four came in at €1,108, a price which included two checked-in 20kg bags. The cost of hiring a Peugeot 208 – or similar, as the car hire phrase goes – in France for the 14 days was coming in at €1,418, taking the total price of our travel to just over €2,600. We also allowed €150 covering the cost of food for four in the two airports, which takes the journey cost to €2,750.

The cost of a return ferry crossing from Rosslare to Cherbourg for the same two weeks in July meanwhile came in at €1,477 while the cost of fuel getting us from Dublin to Rosslare was around €38. The cost of the fuel to take us from Cherbourg to Nantes would be around €120. That would take the total cost of the ferry to €1,635, over €1,000 less than travelling by air.

The cost of flying into La Rochelle with the same amount of luggage and the same amount of spending in the airport came in at €2,650 while the ferry spending was around €1,750. If we wanted to travel to Nice on a plane it would set us back just over three grand, while the ferry journey – including a fairly long drive south from Cherbourg – was coming in at around €2,000.

The biggest saving was a trip to Bordeaux. Travelling by air was coming in at €3,200 while the ferry journey was around €1,750, a saving of about €1,400 which we could blow on as much wine as we could pack into the car for the journey home.