CheapTweet Blog

The following is a guest post from Emily Starbuck Gerson. Emily is a journalist and copywriter who lives in beautiful Austin, Texas. She is obsessed with travel, so she runs a blog, Maiden Voyage, in her free time as a fun excuse to spend more time thinking and talking about travel (follow @themaidenvoyage on Twitter). Emily is also an avid photographer.

Yapta.com

It’s a sickening feeling when you purchase an expensive flight, only to see it have a major price drop just days or weeks later. Yapta.com helps you save money both before and after you purchase a flight. On the front end, Yapta can help you track prices of a flight before you book. You tell Yapta which flights to track (you can also have it track hotel prices based on dates). When the prices drop to rates that will give you the best value, the site sends you an email so you know it’s prime time to book. Conversely, if you book airfare and the price later drops, Yapta will send you an alert letting you know that you are eligible for a refund from the airline you’re flying with (and it gives you instructions for claiming the credit for each airline). According to Yapta.com, the average annual savings per user is $334.16.

HomeExchange.com

Have you ever seen the movie “The Holiday,” in which an American woman and a British woman swap homes for the winter holidays? The site they use in the movie, HomeExchange.com, is real. You have to pay for a subscription for listing your home, but the fee is low, and it doesn’t cost any extra to actually swap homes. You create a listing with basic information about your home in addition to information about where and when you would like to travel. You can then search through the 32,000+ homes around the world and contact the owners of the homes you are interested in directly.

I know of one American family who wanted to go to Paris but were concerned about the price. They found a Parisian family wanting to visit their city in Massachusetts, and it worked out perfectly and saved them tons of cash by swapping. Some people will do a simultaneous swap, while others do not swap at the same time (perhaps one party has a second home, or is traveling somewhere else at the time). Some people swap for a few days at a time, while others swap for several months. Swapping homes is completely free – the two parties don’t exchange money. Some homeowners include their car for the guest. Some may ask that you take care of their pets, but that is not the norm.

CouchSurfing.org

It’s become a bit of a cliché, but CouchSurfing really is a great way to travel on the cheap if you are open to meeting new people. Anyone can join and create a profile for free. The site is primarily for people who are open to having out-of-town guests stay with them, or travelers who want a free, no-frill place to stay. The hosts don’t necessarily have to offer a couch – they may have a guest bedroom or an extra inflatable mattress. Some hosts like to hang out with their guests and show them all around town, while others simply want to give you a free place to crash and be left alone.

If the thought of sharing a home with a stranger freaks you out, you can also just use CouchSurfing to meet people during your travels. Many people have accounts and have indicated that they are not interested in hosting, but are happy to meet up for coffee or show a visitor around town. A free tour from a local is hard to beat. While it may sound a little sketchy, CouchCurfing has safety measures and vouching systems in place.

Email newsletters

Sign up for email newsletters for discount travel websites. Nearby every website sends out email newsletters these days, but only some are really worth receiving.

• ShermansTravel.com sends out a weekly email called “This Week’s Top 25,” which contains hard-to-beat, last-minute deals on hotel stays, cruises, and travel packages.
• TravelZoo.com sends out their Travelzoo Top 20® every week, which is similar to Sherman’s and covers some of the week’s best deals.
• AirFareWatchdog.com sends out weekly newsletters about dirt-cheap flights that leave from your chosen destination. These email newsletters are all very popular, so the deals sometimes sell out if you don’t act fast.

What are some of your favorite money-saving travel websites?

(Bed photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/theredproject)