If you're sitting somewhere cold now, drifting off in your mind to a beach far away — but the rather outrageous price tag on flights these days is putting you off even entertaining a holiday — then gather round, friends. This travel hack might get you a step closer to your holiday dreams.
TikTok travel influencer @pointspat is known for his banger travel tips and advice, and he's just spilled a handy piece of intel that might just save us all a huge chunk of cash the next time we go to book a flight.
So, how does this mysterious travel hack work?
There are plenty of different ways to book flights these days, from accessing an airline's direct website to jumping on a third-party site that aggregates options. While both of those avenues will get you booked on a flight just fine, they're probably not going to yield the most wallet-friendly options.
Instead, Pat swears by using Google Flights to get the best deals and most affordable options. On the surface, it acts like any other aggregate flight search engine — the trick is to be a little bit flexible with your travel plans.
Watch: TikTok influencer reveals cheap flight travel hack. Story continues below.
Ever watched a movie where a main character makes a last-minute decision to head abroad and buys the first ticket out of the airport? Well, this is sort of like that but a little more digital!
Let's say you want to head to Athens for a Euro summer getaway (because who doesn't?). When you open up Google Flights, your search will bring up results that may look a little like this:
You can see the cheapest option is around $2,300 for a return trip — not bad for that time of year, but still on the pricey end, especially on a supposed low-cost airline like Scoot.
However, Pat has a workaround that will get you to Greece cheaper — albeit with a couple of extra travel steps. He says the best way to get the cheapest option is to "follow the deal not the destination".
If you enter in those same dates but open up the destination to all of Europe, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the options that pop up for different cities at much more affordable prices. For example, our search showed that flying to Amsterdam is cheaper way to get you somewhere in Europe.
From Amsterdam, you'll then be able to hop on one of the many low-cost airlines (or trains) to get you to Greece — or anywhere in Europe your holiday-ready heart desires — for what will likely be less than the direct flight to your destination would've been.
Now, are you feeling really adventurous? Good!
If you've got some dates in mind for a holiday but don't really care where you go, as long as it's away from your responsibilities, Pat has a Google Flights 'choose your own adventure' style hack.
Simply open up Google Flights, add in your preferred dates, then select 'Anywhere' as the destination and watch the world open up.
Given our proximity to Asia you'll most likely find some great deals there or even stumble upon a destination you'd never even considered before. The world is truly your oyster.
If you're flexible with your dates as well, you can get lost in a bit of a vortex trying to uncover the cheapest flights possible — good, clean fun that may just get you on that holiday you've been dreaming of asap.
Feature Image: TikTok/@pointspat, Google Flights.
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