For some people, New Years means getting a new gym membership or setting a financial goal of some kind. But if you’re an avid traveller, your New Year’s resolution may be to spend more time travelling and less time stuck at home.
Here’s how you can travel more in 2017:
Get Saving
Many people can find travel daunting due to the cost of entertainment, restaurants, hotels, and flights, but don’t let these expenses scare you. If you’re serious about travelling, consider creating a new savings account just for travel- separate from your regular savings and checking accounts, and set up an automatic payment into your account so it transfers each month.
Use your Vacation Days
You can get more bang for your vacation day buck if you plan around holidays and weekends. Grab your calendar, mark down any long weekends, and send in your vacation requests as early as you can.
If you’re going to make the most of these vacation days and weekends, you’ll need to get organised. Make a list of the places you’d like to visit and schedule your dream trips out in advance so you’ll be motivated to save and won’t be spending your long weekends wishing you were off having an adventure.
Use Cheap Airlines
This option doesn’t work for everyone, as it will depend on when you’re travelling and the type of travel you can tolerate. For many people though, the discomfort of using a low-cost airline is well worth it for the cheap price, and as long as you don’t go too crazy with your baggage you can find flights to Europe for just a few hundred dollars. Take a stopover in the United States and you may be able to snap up one of the $69 flights that Norwegian will be offering this year.
Get Learning
Learning a foreign language is a great way to get motivated to travel more. Sure, it can seem a little scary (irregular verbs are no fun), but with just a little time investment every day, you’ll find yourself picking up a new language faster than you expected. And when you’re travelling in a new country and can communicate with the locals it will all be worth it.
Talk to your Travel Agent
Travel agents are the experts of the travel world- they live and breathe travel, and spend all day talking about it (when they’re not off exploring new countries themselves). If you’re hoping to do some serious travel this year, book a consult with your favourite travel agent, and let them know your plans. They’ll often have insight into the best time to visit certain countries (don’t be surprised if they call a colleague for even more advice), and can let you know how to save some serious money in key destinations.
By letting your travel agent know you’d like to travel more (and where you’d like to go), you’re mentally committing to more travel (something that is often half the battle), and giving them the chance to give you the heads up when they come across amazing deals to those places you’ve been wanting to visit.
