The following is a guest post from Matt from NomadicMatt, who as you might guess has a passion for travel and doesn’t like to stay in one place for too long. He wrote this while running around Spain! If you like what you see, I encourage you to check out his site for his travel blog and other travel tips.

One thing that always irks me about my fellow countrymen is the huge perception that travel is expensive. With only two weeks away a year, I can see why a lot of people would want to splash out on an expensive holiday. There’s nothing wrong with that. But a lot of people spend more money and get less value. They spend money on things the travel industry tells them they need but could find much cheaper. I’ve been traveling around the world for three years and whenever, I have friends come visit me in places, they are amazed at how little they spend compared to what they thought they would. I don’t penny pinch but I don’t spend money stupidly.

Take for example my trip to Thailand with a co-worker. Flights to Thailand can run anywhere between 800 and 1200 dollars for an economy class ticket. You can only hope to get on the lower end and sites like Momondo and Mobissimo are good at that. Additionally, you can check out my page on how to find cheap flights. My friend asked me how it would cost her for the two and half weeks we were going to be there. Should she bring 1,000 dollars? 1,500? Thinking about what I had planned for us, I told her $700 should be enough, unless she wanted to shop – then she should bring a few hundred more. She didn’t believe me but I was right. Here’s the break down:

• Accommodation – Typical double bed room with shower, fan, or a/c. Nothing fancy but not super dirt, “I see a cockroach” cheap either. It cost us 20 dollars a night, which was split by two people.
• Transportation – We took the local buses and trains around the country. They are very cheap with a train costing only a few hundred baht. (It’s 35 baht to one dollar). Overall, we spent $50 dollars on transport.
• Food – Having lived in Thailand, I know the best food there is on the streets, which is also the cheapest food. A meal is about 30 baht. We also ate a lot of seafood on the islands which is about 300 baht a meal. Throw in a few sushi and Italian dinners at about 800 baht each and in total for 2 1/2 weeks we spent about 3,500 baht on food, which is $100 dollars.
• Alcohol – We like to party so this was a bit of a budget buster. We easily spent $100 USD on going to clubs and beach parties.
• Tours – We took one tour through the national park that cost us 1,500 baht for two days. The guides spoke perfect English and new things about the area that amazing. When we went to the beach, we did a snorkel tour for 500 baht.
• Other sights – We spent about $10 dollars on the palace and temples in Bangkok.

So for 18 days we spent about $560 dollars per person, or about $31 a day, without skimping on anything, eating the local food, taking a few tours, and doing nothing really cheap. For 18 days, that is not a lot of money.

Thailand is a cheap country so I’m always amazed when people walk away spending lots of money. A typical two week tour to Thailand runs about $1,000 dollars from Gap Adventures, which actually specializes in inexpensive tours. We spent less in longer. (Editor’s note: Or you could stay an entire month for the same price of $1,000.)

Moreover, when most people travel to Thailand they stay at the big international hotels like the Marriott or the Sheraton, fly everywhere, and stay at luxury beach bungalows for 2,000 baht a night. When they eat, they eat out at fancy places. Relative to their home country, whether the U.S. or Europe, this may seem like a bargain (Wow! I just got a beach bungalow for 70 dollars a night!) but compared to how living locally is a third of the price, you aren’t getting good value for your money.

If luxury is what you want, go for it but if you want more value for your money, live more like a local, take the local transportation, and stay in middle of the road places. You’ll save a lot of money but also get to know the pulse of the location more. There’s nothing wrong with spending money but I find not getting the most out of the money you spend a waste.

(Photo credit: NomadicMatt)

This is a follow-up to my 5-Step Guide to Finding The Lowest Rate For Hotel Rooms, which includes tips on using “opaque” sites like Hotwire.com and Priceline.com to save on hotel rooms.

Specifically, I’ll show you how to greatly improve your guess as to which hotel you’re actually bidding on Hotwire.com before pulling out your credit card. This was initially inspired by a helpful comment by reader Nasty N8, but I expanded and altered his advice a bit.

Finding The Hidden Hotel

When you run a search for hotels on Hotwire, you only get the price, star rating, and the general neighborhood. For example, here’s a search result for hotels near the Orlando airport (MCO) on 12/20/09.

Hotwire Participating Hotels
I see that I can get a 4-star hotel near MCO for $56+taxes. But which one? How do I know if it is any good? Using the Hotwire Hotel List for Florida at BetterBidding.com, I scroll down to the Orlando MCO section and see two listings: Hyatt Regency Orlando Airport and Renaissance Orlando Hotel Airport (Marriott). Again, this list is not 100% accurate, but it does provide a shortcut possibility and also another data point for later (see scenic route).

TripAdvisor Clues
I click on the red box “Continue” to see the total with taxes per night ($69.45), and also learn more details about the actual hotel. If I scroll down I see some information from TripAdvisor.com:

With this information, I can usually reverse engineer the specific hotel from the TripAdvisor (TA) site. There are three points of interest here:

1. Tripadvisor Traveler Rating (Out of 5). Based on customer reviews, this is an average rating of quality. Sometimes they won’t match up perfectly (i.e. TA will show 3.5, but Hotwire will round up to 4), but most of the time they will.
2. Number of reviews. This will not be exact, but instead be rounded off to the nearest 20. So if TA has 35 reviews, then Hotwire will say 20+. If TA has 41, then Hotwire will show 40+.
3. Date of last review. Simply look at the date of the first review you see on TA, and compare with this date.

Mix-n-Match
Let’s go back to the initial hotel list. Here are the Tripadvisor pages for the Hyatt Regency (4.5 dots, 163 reviews, last on Aug 2009) and the Renaissance Hotel (4 dots, 57 reviews, last on Aug 2009). Remember, 57 is the same as 40+.

We see here that the most likely hotel is the Renaissance Orlando Hotel, with all factors matching. At Expedia.com, this hotel would have cost $112 per night with taxes on the exact same day. By doing a little legwork, you could secure a savings of over $42 per night (38%).

The Scenic Route
If you did not find a match, then the hotel may not be updated on the list yet. Here, you’ll have to run a search on Tripadvisor. Use the “Hotels” tab and act as if you want to book a hotel, using your travel dates and everything. Do not just use the search box. Now, the left sidebar will have a ton of options to narrow down your search results. Again, use your region, your Tripadvisor rating, and also the star class rating. (Note: The hotel class “star” rating by Tripadvisor will sometimes vary from the ratings from Hotwire, so you might allow one star difference either way.)

Here is a nice screenshot that shows how I narrowed it down to 6 hotels. As you can see, the only hotel left that matches the Tripadvisor stats is… again the Renaissance Orlando Hotel!

You can also do this down the line with all the different Hotwire search results. Now that you can figure out the actual hotels, you might feel that $50 a night at a 3-star Holiday Inn is better than $100 at at 4-star Hyatt. Happy hotel hunting!

Whenever I’m not traveling on the company dime, I usually run through a checklist to find the lowest price on hotel stays. Let’s say you’re like me and need to find a room in New York City for a few nights, checking in August 30th. I’d like to stay somewhere near Times Square in Manhattan, close to all the sights and action. I’m also leaning towards something reliable and not bargain basement – this is NYC and I don’t want a Hotel Carter experience involving bed bugs, roaches, and urine smells. (Note this for later: At their website, they charge $99 a night.)

1. Check the hotel’s direct website.
If you have some favorite chains due to corporate agreements or loyalty points, then this narrows your search down and you can try and check directly with their website. For example, there is Hilton.com, IHG.com, and StarwoodHotels.com for Sheraton/Westin/W Hotels. Here are some quotes (all prices not including taxes):

Hilton Times Square, $195
Hilton New York, $169
W NY Times Square, $272
Westin NY Times Square, $232
Sheraton Manhattan Times Square, $189
Four Points Midtown, $157

This gives me a benchmark to work from. Another benefit here is that they usually have some form of “Best Rate Guarantee”. Starwood will beat a competing vendor’s price by either 10% or give you 2,000 Starpoints.

2. Try to use loyalty program points.
An extension of the above, at times it is better to redeem your points, or some combination of cash and points. For example, the Westin NY Times Square would only cost 12,000 Starpoints per night, or 48,000 points for 5 nights (avg. 9,600/night). Keep in mind the point redemption even covers taxes, which would turn the $232 listed above to $268 per night. Too bad I’m low on Starpoints after visiting Madrid.

You can earn Starpoints faster and get up to 25,000 bonus Starpoints with the Starwood co-branded American Express card.

3. Use the travel search engines. Expedia, Kayak, Hotels.com, etc.
You know the drill. Actually, you can search most of these all at once through Kayak.com. Sometimes one site like Expedia may have special rates for a block of rooms that aren’t available on other sites.

From Kayak, I note that the prices for the Starwood and Hilton hotels were basically the same. After sorting by price, I see that the Holiday Inn NYC is slightly cheaper at $160/night + taxes. A bit farther away in Midtown East there is the DoubleTree Metropolitan at $149. Not too bad. Oh look, Hotel Carter is discounted at $67. Too bad it doesn’t include the cost of burning your clothes afterwards!

4. Use opaque sites like Hotwire and Priceline.
Finally, there are what are called “opaque” travel sites, because you don’t know the name of the hotel until you’ve paid for the non-refundable room. You must decide only based on the star quality rating and general neighborhood of the hotel, which means you can’t look up reviews easily either. Priceline is done using a reverse auction format, while Hotwire just gives you the price.

On Hotwire, I find that I can get 2-star hotel (examples given are Comfort Inn, La Quinta, Days Inn) for $93+tax ($112 total) in a large and vague area that basically covers everything south of Central Park.

5. Using database sites to reverse engineer the hotel information. Sites like BiddingForTravel and BetterBidding gather information from successful purchasers to remove some of the mystery.

For example, what exactly might be a 3.5 star hotel in the Midtown area? Does Hotwire call the Westin Time Square 4 stars, or 3.5 stars, or 4.5 stars? What if Priceline disagrees? What one site calls Midtown West might be Midtown Central to another.

Well, here is a list of hotels in NYC that Hotwire and Priceline has sold rooms for, complete with star rating and neighborhood. From this list, the only 2* in Central Park listed is WooGo Lincoln Center. Of course this might not be the hotel you end up with, but it is a good possibility and you get a sense of quality (mixed reviews).

In addition, you can find a list of winning bids posted by users, and BetterBidding even has a calendar for easy searching. Here are the applicable ones for my situation:

Hotwire Winning Bids
4*, Central Park, Empire Hotel, $139
3.5*, Midtown Central, Sheraton Times Square, $119
3.5*, Midtown East, Millennium UN, $116

Priceline Winning Bids
4*, Midtown Central, Sheraton NY Towers, $125
4*, Midtown West, Sheraton NY Towers, $115, $110, $126
4*, Times Square, Westin TS, $169

Putting things together, if Hotwire is offering me a 3.5* hotel in Midtown Central on these dates, it is most likely be the Sheraton Times Square. Or, in the same price range, I could likely get the Sheraton NY Towers. After reading some reviews, I chose the Times Square location. The prices keep fluctuating, but when I was searching it was at $113. That’s a pretty good price for a solid hotel.

To be the most aggressive, I would go onto Priceline and bid about 20% below the Hotwire price for a 3.5* hotel in the Times Square region, say $95. I don’t want to bid too low, because each time I get rejected, I must change a search parameter (star rating, neighborhood) to bid again. Also, I run the risk of getting another 3.5* hotel that I don’t like as much.

So I held my breath, used Hotwire… and got it. Whew! In the end, I got what I wanted at 40% off the “guaranteed” low price, $113 vs. $189 per night at the Sheraton Times Square.. Over few nights, that’s hundreds of dollars in savings.

To think, if you did no research, you might end up with the Hotel Carter for $99/night! If you have tips to improve this process, please leave a comment below! I know I could try hostels or even couchsurfing and such, but that’s not what I was looking for on this trip.

The tickets are booked and hotel reservations are made for our trip to Spain. Of course, all this economic turmoil makes me a bit nervous, but the fact that we finally finished saving up for our 6-month Emergency Fund makes me much more comfortable. Not that we feel our jobs are in trouble, but you never know.

We did try several things to minimize costs for our 7-night stay in Spain:

Airfare: Save 50% By Combining Trips
We already committed going to a friend’s wedding on the East Coast, and so as is our habit we looked to see we could “add on” a trip somewhere interesting in that direction. For example, the ticket from West Coast to East Coast was around $350, while tacking on the trip to Spain made the flight cost $750. Effectively, we only had to pay $400 each to fly to Spain – not a bad deal! (Other European countries were $200-$400 more for some reason.)

In addition, we managed to book an open-jaw trip into Madrid and out of Barcelona for the same price. This allows us to spend more time in both cities, and we don’t have to pay to travel back to Madrid for the return flight.

We still have to decide whether to take train or plane from Madrid to Barcelona. The train is more expensive, but might be more fun? Airplane looks to be both slightly faster and cheaper, though.

However, I have collected a fair number of the ever-useful Starpoints, mostly from my Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express, so I decided to look at what was available. I found the Westin Palace Hotel, first built in 1912 by King Alfonso XIII as a place for his wedding guests to stay (naturally). Rated Spain’s #1 Hotel by Condé Naste magazine, it runs €305 = $450 per night!

However, I could book a room for only 12,000 Starpoints. On top of that, if I booked 4 nights, I got the 5th free. So now I had 5 nights for only 48,000 points total. At the $450 rate, that made each Starpoint worth 4.7 cents. Put another way, my Starwood card was earning me 4.7% cash back. Even at the budget hotel rate of $120 a night, I still was getting 1.25%. Except now I’m sleeping on a Heavenly Bed and staying in a palace!

Barcelona was even more expensive, but we found a simple hotel for €85 = $125 per night.

Pre-Planning
We both hate guided tours, so we usually just plan things out by ourselves with guidebooks and the internet. We like Rick Steves, Rough Guides, and Lonely Planet the best. We usually buy one guidebook that we can highlight and mark up, and also bring along three other ones + a language phrasebook from the library. Of course, we risk losing the books in which case we’d have to replace them, but I think it is worthwhile. This time around, I even checked out some Spanish language CDs. Dos cerveza por fa vor!

Of course, I don’t want to skimp to much on food. I will be looking forward to consuming large amounts of tapas and house wine at every hole-in-the-wall I can find. I can’t wait to try chocolate con churros! If I generously estimate about $40 a day per person for food, and given that we would pay about $10 a day for food at home, that’s an added cost of about $30 per day.

We briefly considering eating at El Bulli with Ferran Adria, but it only opens from April to September each year. Besides, I don’t think I’d be willing to drop $400 on a single meal, even if it was voted the best restaurant in the world.

Adding this all up – airfare, hotel, and food should cost an estimated $400 + $125 + $210 = $735 per person. Add in remaining transportation and sightseeing, and I think we will still come in under $900 easily. A lot of money still, but hopefully resulting in some lasting memories.

I’ve already shared my habit of trying to get bumped off of airline flights on purpose for the free tickets. I haven’t been bumped recently, but here’s another frugal travel quirk that most people don’t seem to do…

Sometimes even those us who like to pack light end up bringing a lot of bags or heavy boxes. At the baggage claim, you’re then faced with the prospect of paying $3 for a cart to hold your stuff for 8 minutes. The horror!

Your bags usually take several minutes to be loaded onto the carousel anyways. So instead of going straight to baggage claim, after I get off the plane I go directly to the check-in ticketing level. Usually, especially if there are baggage scanning stations, there are plenty of discarded carts. I grab one, take the elevator down one or two levels to baggage claim, and proceed to load my bags on my free luggage cart. 🙂 I’ve wasted no extra time, and my success rate is around 90%.

Most hardcore independent travelers will agree that you can pack for a year ’round the world in just one carry-on. Being able to fit your life into one backpack is almost a meditation exercise for me. It makes me feel free. But since this is a money blog, here are some financial benefits of packing light:

• More fun time. You don’t have to arrive to the airport as early, and you don’t waste time waiting around at the baggage claim after arriving. Now you have more time to soak in the culture!
• No lost luggage. You don’t have to worry about lost or damaged checked luggage, and spending money replacing items in a foreign country.
• Increased airport flexibility. Being one unit allows you to easily be “bumped” onto another airline, or you might go standby on an earlier flight. Similarly, if you miss a connection, you don’t have to pray that your luggage will still show up.
• Cheaper transportation. You can take public transportation everywhere with ease – subways, crowded trains, even hanging off of a farmer’s truck. You can also walk longer distances without suffering.

So I thought I’d share some of the somewhat specialized gear that I actually don’t mind spending money on. I would have to say 75% of my stuff was bought at either the REI Outlet or Columbia Outlet stores.

Luggage – REI Tour Pack
I don’t think REI makes this anymore, but it’s a pretty simple bag and cost about $125. It’s basically a big squarish backpack exactly the size limit of a carry-on, with nice padded shoulder straps and compression straps too. Good quality, YKK zippers. There is also a small detachable daypack – perfect for carrying your rain jacket, maps, guidebooks, and bottle of water when out and about. A similar bag would be Rick Steves’ Classic Back Door Bag

Clothing
The general idea here to have it be lightweight, look casual, and be fast-drying. That way you can just hand wash them at night in the hotel room and have them ready to go in the morning. I love my REI Sahara Convertible Pants. They convert to shorts easily, so it’s one less thing to pack. You can also buy hiking or “travel” shirts, socks, and even underwear that can be hand-washed and will dry overnight. My next purchase will be some nice travel boxers of Ex Officio. Technically, you could simply buy one of each of these, and just wash as needed! I think I’ll spring for at least 3 of each.

I always bring a good fleece jacket, but since I own one already that isn’t an extra expense.

Silk Money Belt
This “personal lockbox” allows me to sleep in hostels and walk around busy areas while keeping my passports and credit cards safe. It’s highly unlikely someone will poke around there without me noticing. Besides, it’s actually pretty comfortable. Here’s an example for $13.

Extra Toiletries Kit
I basically bought some cheap travel-sized (and TSA approved) plastic bottles, and made a duplicate of all the personal products I use everyday. I don’t move things in and out of my toiletry bag, it’s always 100% packed. Contact lenses, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, comb, whatever. So when I need to pack, I just grab it and go.

Electrical
I would like to say I have a sleek 3 lb. laptop and some nice GSM cell phone/internet hookup, but I actually don’t pack anything electrical with me besides my camera. Just about everything I need can be accessed by finding an internet cafe. I can post to blogs from anywhere, or even log into my computer remotely if desired.

More Links
Packing Light & Right – Rick Steves
Carrying off the art of one carry-on – SF Chronicle
The Travelite FAQ

Please share your own tips as well in the comments! Right now I’m trying to figure out how to fit in a week in Thailand in March or April. Gotta work on my mid-term goal 🙂