In less than a month, I will be home in the United States for a few weeks. In general, travel within the United States can be a bit of a pain in the neck. The distances are large and if you no longer have a car like me, it can be difficult to get around. Luckily, I have some tips for finding cheap US travel. This break, I’m visiting Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, Charleston and Cincinnati for under $300. The fact is, US travel doesn’t have to be as expensive as we think.
Over the years, I’ve accumulated some practices I put in place for when I’m booking transportation. Here are some of my favorite tips for finding cheap US travel.
4 Tips for Finding Cheap US Travel
1. Do not rule out the bus
I find that a lot of Americans in the United States have a negative connotation with taking the bus. They have this idea of a dirty, dingy bus taking like 12 hours to do a 6 hour trip. However that’s not always the case.
First of all, I always recommend Megabus when traveling from one city to another. It’s not available everywhere in the United States, but it does go a lot of places. I would especially recommend it for these routes: Washington, DC to New York, New York to Boston and Cincinnati to Chicago (I have taken all of these routes). They are in over 100 cities in the US and fares start out at $1. As more people buy, the fares go up. So if you buy in advance, it’ll be lower. I remember like 8 years ago, I found a ticket from Washington, DC to New York for $1. It was amazing.
In addition to Megabus, you can also ride with Bolt Bus. They also have fares that start out at $1. The only difference is that they are only on the West Coast and Northeast. So if you’re say in the South or Midwest, they won’t be able to help you. I was surprised at how extensive their West Coast offerings are. They have included cities in Washington, Oregon and California. They even have Las Vegas in there! So if you’re out in California, a weekend trip to Las Vegas just got a lot more affordable!
The other two big bus companies are Greyhound and Trailways. Greyhound has often gotten the reputation for being kind of sketchy. I would say more than anything, it can be very long. However in recent years, they’ve introduced express buses. I think they want to compete with Bolt and Megabus. I have taken their expresses bus several times and it was pretty quick! They also have service into parts of Mexico and Canada. I never knew that before!
There are other bus companies operating in the US as well. I would recommend looking at Busbud when figuring out your transportation. It compares all the bus times from the different companies. By using this, you can pick the best price and the best time for your schedule.
2. Budget airlines are your best friend
Oftentimes flying is the best option when traveling in the United States. I mean, you could take a bus from New York to Denver, but it would take at least a day and a half. For the longest time, that just meant making your peace with $250 roundtrip tickets. Those days are now over.
In recent years. several budget airlines have popped up in the United States. Their whole thing is no frills. I remember one of them called their airplanes airbuses and I thought “yeah I mean I’m basically on a bus with wings.” If you want drinks and snacks, you pay for them. If you want to check a bag, you pay for it. Heck if you want a specific seat, you pay for that too.
I myself have always been rather low-maintenance. I pack light and don’t mind a flight without snacks. It’s all worth saving some money to me. Here are a few budget airlines to consider: Allegiant, Frontier and Spirit. While these airlines show up in search engines, I would recommend going to their website directly. Some of them don’t have flights everyday either. For example, I found an Allegiant flight from Charleston, SC to Cincinnati in December. There was one flight that week on Thursday. It just so happened that that fit my schedule perfectly.
Both Spirit and Frontier also have flights going to parts of the Caribbean, Mexico and South America. Several years ago, I caught a flight to Nicaragua on Spirit. While the fares might be a tad more since they’re international, they’re still cheaper than the major airlines. Now you can travel internationally cheaper than you thought!
In general, budget airlines are your best friend, but you should also try our sites like Dealsdaddy. They offer a voucher code for flight booking, hotel booking and cottage booking.
3. Use Skyscanner
Another one of my tips for finding cheap US travel is in the search engine you use. My preferred flight search engine is Skyscanner. I find that it offers the most comprehensive searches. It even will show flights that combine several airlines. That’s how I found my super cheap one-way from Barcelona to Chicago to come home for Christmas. It will involve me going from Barcelona to Paris to Iceland and then Chicago, but the price was crazy good.
There are some features that I absolutely love about Skyscanner. First of all, it allows you to search flight prices for an entire month. So let’s say that you have a friend in another city that you want to visit, but several weekends work for you both. This feature allows you to see what weekends have the best flights and book accordingly. The second feature I love is the option to put an undecided destination.
There are other times when I have a few days off and I know I want to travel, I just don’t know where. You can see all the flights from the cheapest to most expensive for a particular set up dates. You can also click to add nearby airports to your search. That was how I found a flight home leaving out of Granada (where I used to live) last November for my best friend’s wedding. I had assumed that flights would be too expensive out of Granada, but I was wrong.
There are of course other search engines like Kayak and Expedia that has their benefits as well. I have also used them to book flights. However I’ve always found the best deals using Skyscanner.
4. Use an incognito browser
Did you know that the internet is spying on you? Okay, not really. Each website uses something called cookies. This stores your data so that they can show you different things. Apparently search engine sites save what flights you search and sometimes don’t show you the lowest prices when you search again (ah capitalism).
While this is frustrating, there is a way around that. You can do a search with an incognito browser. Basically this browser can be used when you don’t want people to know what you’re looking at (often used for … other things). When searching for the best flights, you have to use it!
But how do I do it? Well if you use Chrome like I do, there are those three little dots up in the top, right hand corner. Click on them, and you should have the option to open an incognito window. Do that and go to Skyscanner on there. You can still do everything you need on there like a regular browser.
Well those are my best tips for finding affordable transportation in the United States. If you’re like me, it can be a bit of a headache trying to see everyone in different parts of the country. However transportation between cities can be more affordable than you think.
What are some tips that you have for finding affordable travel and transportation in the United States?
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