Travel Tips & Tricks:
General Travel Tips
Before we get into the specific travel tips, we want to share with tou our general travel tips that apply regardless of the type of trip or the duration.
Maximise your Annual Leave & Trip Time
Most people in the UK & Ireland get between 23 & 28 days annual leave a year. We usually also benefit from additional Bank/Public holidays (8 in the UK, 10 in Ireland), giving us between 31 and 38 days annual leave per year to play with.
For the average city-break we recommend a minimum of a 3-4 day trip.
Utilise Bank/Public Holidays
Using your bank/[Public holidays wisely minimised the number of annual leave days you need to use. The best example of this is the Easter weekend - Instant 4 days off, 0 annual leave days used.
Additionally, depending on the available flights, consider leaving the night before your leave/public holiday officially starts - This can add an additional night to your trip, with most European destinations being only a 2-3 hour flight away and starts your adventure early! Depending on the flight times, your work may allow you to leave a few hours early so that you can get a flight (or offer to make up the time over the course of the week leading up to it)!
Or, if this is a new trip/idea, book a Thursday & Friday off (2 days annual leave), and utilise the weekend to get you your 4 days. Again, consider leaving the night before your leave officially starts - This can add an additional night to your trip.
Make the most of your Weekends
For longer / multi-destination trips, start and end on a weekend can also get you an additional 2-4 days of trip at either side of the 5 days annual leave you use. Again, consider leaving the night before your leave/public holiday officially starts.
The Return Journey
For your return journey, look into getting the latest available flight home to allow you to get the most out of your last day.
Tip: Even if you can't extend your trip for some additional time there, use your down time / early evenings / evenings to go out and explore. Look up the key sights you want to see for the location, and plan accordingly! Even a couple of ours in the evening in a new place can be a great experience!
Business Trips
Another good option to maximising travel and exploring time is to maximise your business trips! (Richard love's doing this!)
If you are going somewhere for a week or more for work, look to see if you can tack on a couple of days at the end, add on some leave time to the end of the trip, or plan out and maximise your weekends/down time.
A lot of companies have no problem with you delaying your flight home from a trip - as it is often in their interests (it's cheaper to fly you home on a Sunday night than a Friday night! [Richard uses this one a LOT for exploring different parts of Germany at the weekends and flying home on Sunday night]). As long as you are paying for your own accommodation, food and expenses for the weekend, most companies have no problem with this.
Another option, especially for longer-haul destinations, Is to add some annual leave time on to the end of your trip. The company still needs to fly you home, If that happens to be a few days/a week/2 weeks later... its still going to cost them the same. As long as you fly home from the same location to the original airport, most of the companies we have worked for have no problem with this.
Work-cations
Richard & Liam have done a fair few of these...
A good way to make your trip last a bit longer without using additional days of annual leave is a work-cation.
If your job allows it, we suggested having a couple of working days while you are there (Timezones permitting). This allows you to work as normal, saving your annual leave days, while continuing to stay on location, enjoy your evenings, and potentially get another weekend out of it.
Most hotels and many hostels have Business Centres or quiet working areas you can make use of. If all else fails, Starbucks, or any other coffee shop with decent wifi work just as well.
If you are planning a longer-term work-cation, signing up for a monthly or on-demand membership for a co-working space like WeWork or Spaces/Regus is also a good option.
Airport Lounge Pass
We have found this one to be a life saver. Airports are always busy, loud, chaotic and expensive places.
People on their phone phones, people talking in multiple languages, kids running around/screaming....the list of irritants goes on.
Getting a membership to a service like Priority Pass, which gives you access to thousands of Airport Lounges across the world, gives you respite from the chaos of airports while you wait for your flight or connection.
Even if travelling on a budget, this gives you one of the perks of travelling business class. Your food and most drinks (Some alcoholic drinks have a surcharge depending on the lounge) are included, as well as a comfortable, quiet environment to relax (or work) while you wait. We all got ours about 10 years ago and have never looked back since!
Airline Loyalty Programmes
It is worth while joining the loyaly programmes of the major airlines you travel on most often for a few reasons.
The first and most obvious is collecting air-miles/avios points, which accumulate over time with every flight you take, and can be redeemed at a later date. If you travel for work, some employers will allow you to collect airline loyalty points for flights you take for work! Some Bank Accounts / Credit cards enable you to collect air-miles/avios points on a monthly basis (sometimes for a small monthly fee) that can be converted to avios points for use with many major airlines.
The second reasons is, that occasionally, admittedly this happens less often these days, airlines will upgrade a couple of economy class passengers to Business Class on Long Haul flights (KLM has been good for this one). The passengers they select to upgrade usually come from members of their frequent flyer/loyalty programmes, passengers who had booked Premium Economy seats.
The third reason is also linked to business class travel. When Business Class is not particularly busy for a specific flight, airlines will often email customers booked on the flight from 4 days before, right up to the day of travel with an upgrade offer. With some airlines, this fixed price offer will range from £99 to a few hundred pounds - and is usually cheaper for members of their loyalty programmes (KLM, Air France, Lufthansa to name but a few).
For others airlines (BA, Aer Lingus, LATAM), the upgrade email will take you to a website where you effectively "bid" for a Business Class upgrade, where you enter the amount you are potentially willing to pay for an upgrade. The downside to this is that you don't know if your offer was successful until the day before travel .
Pre-Return upgrade offers are usually significantly cheaper than it would have been if you booked a Business Class ticket up front. If you do chose to upgrade, this means you will get priority airport security access, Business Class Lounge access and Business Class boarding priority for your flight.
While you are not always successful, particularly with the airlines that have a bidding process, a Business Class upgrade can be a very pleasant ending to a great trip!
Hotel Loyalty Programmes
Similar to airline loyalty programmes, Hotel Group loyalty programmes are also well worth signing up for, even more so if you travel for work.
Hotel loyalty points can add up to a free nights stay, or even a couple of nights depending on how frequent a traveller you are.
They can also be used to get room upgrades, both when booking and on the day of arrival at you hotel (where they have availability).
This is another tip Richard swears by, given he travels for work for 1 week every month.
We are all human, and we all forget things from time to time. But you will be materially better off if you try to get and pack everything you need prior to setting foot in the airport.
Get what you need for your trip in advance
For the sake of your bank balance DO NOT BUY at the airport!
It really does pay to plan and buy what you need in advance.
Aside from things that are unavoidable and can only be bought after airport security (Eg: Water/soft drinks for your flight), you should avoid buying from stores in the airport, as the prices are massively inflated compared to the high street, and you could end up paying up to 4x as much as you would had you bought the items prior to departure.
This is particularly true of:
- Travel Electronics (Eg: Universal adapters)
- Sun screen / Insect repellant
- Toiletries
- Books et.
Seriously, we have seen the same travel adapter we all bought for £15 on sale for £60 in the airport! [We're especially looking at you WHSmith!]