An internet expert has revealed how holiday-makers can save cash online when booking flights this year.
Prices for everything are going up at the minute, including holidays, but there are some ways to keep costs down if you know your way around one or two websites, The Sun reports.
One of those sites is Google Flights, which has a couple of great features to make sure the price you pay for your holiday is the most affordable.
Fox News’ “CyberGuy Kurt Knutsson explained how to use one of them to avoid paying too much for flights.
In a video he said: “There’s an amazing feature on Google that lets you track the prices of flights to anywhere you want to go.
“Go to flights.google.com and put in the cities you want to travel to and from. Next select your dates of travel and tap ‘search’.”
After scrolling down to look at the price of his flights, Kurt showed how to see if they are either cheap, normal or expensive for the route.
He then revealed how to set up notifications, so that you could find out when the prices of the flight change.
He continued: “You can check if the prices are typical for your trip. If they are on the price scale it shows, then there’s a chance they could drop lower on the scale.
“Where it says ‘track prices’ toggle this on either with the dates you’ve already selected, or if you’re a little more flexible, meaning prices could also be more flexible, toggle on the ‘any dates’ option.
“You get price alerts to receive emails the moment the price of the flight changes. It’s amazing.”
Other travellers have revealed different features available on Google Flights to find cheaper flights as well.
Tiktoker ‘ndainternet’ showed a very simple method he uses on the website to keep his travel costs to a minimum.
In a video, he said that he books through the website, but when it comes to searching for a destination, he doesn’t select one.
“Simply search on Google Flights and then don’t put anything in the destination tab and then simply click the map.”
By doing this, Google Flights will show you the cheapest airfares for several different destinations, allowing you to pick the cheapest one for a holiday.
Sun Online Travel put the hack to the test and it revealed return flights from London to Berlin for $A70, to Milan for $A35 and to Marrakech for $A60, among many other deals.
So as long as you’re flexible on both your destination and the dates in which you travel, there are certainly savings to be made using the hack.
More than 1600 people have commented on the video, most of them impressed with the advice. Some had already put it to good use.
One wrote: “Literally the best advice ever on Tiktok. Thank you!”
A second said: “Yeah it’s true a few days ago my brother went to Belgium for £16 [$A28].”
Another added: “I saved money using this hack after watching this video. Thank you.”
There are some airlines that prevent their flights from appearing on third-party travel sites like Google Flights and Skyscanner, who reveal the cheapest deals available.
However, there is still a way for people to find cheaper deals for those airlines, without having to search around on different websites.
One IT expert used their coding skills to create a Google Chrome extension that is both free and easy to use.
The extension searches airlines that will not appear on aggregate booking sites, including American airline Southwest as well as others, in order to find the cheapest deals for passengers.
The creator of the extension posted on Reddit under the name avetisyan818 to reveal their creation and explain how it worked.
They wrote: “Southwest Airlines is the second largest US airline but doesn’t display fares on Google Flights.
“I made Travel Arrow to automatically convert your Google Flight searches on to Southwest to compare deals.”
The extension works as a pop-up that will run a flight search to also include results from Kayak, Skyscanner and Southwest Airlines, when it will reveal alternative and sometimes cheaper fares.
The Travel Arrow website claims: “Travel Arrow helps you save on travel from revealing Priceline’s hidden saver deals to easily converting your Google Flights search to Kayak, Skyscanner, and much more.”
This story originally appeared on The Sun and is republished here with permission
