Travel Deal of the Day (September 11, 2007)

If you are planning a trip on a budget, you might be focusing on how your airfare varies when you change your travel dates. Before you plan you trip based solely on the days/times you can find the best airfare, you should take a step back and look at the entire vacation price.

The Deal:
When planning a trip, people will often shift dates based on small differences in the price of airfare. It may be smarter, however, to focus items which you pay for each day of your vacation such as nightly hotel prices. Here is an example – you may decide to go a day earlier on your vacation to save $20 on airfare. If you have a family of four, that can save you $80. Many people will ignore the cost of the hotel that extra night or whether going or coming on different days will make you ineligible for a package or weekend rate (for hotel or car rental) that you might otherwise obtain.

The smart way to plan a trip is to measure how the total trip cost varies when you change your vacation dates. The great part of this analysis is that you may realize that extending your vacation actually lowers your total trip cost.