Tire mais férias: Conselhos de Scott Keyes

Publicado: 17/5/21 | 17 de maio de 2021

Os vôos acessíveis de Scott são um dos maiores e melhores sites de busca de negócios da Internet. Eu os inspeciono regularmente quando estou em busca de uma nova viagem. Eles são inigualáveis ​​nas ofertas que descobrem (pelo menos para o mercado dos EUA). Seu fundador, Scott Keyes, recentemente compôs um livro compartilhando todas as suas dicas privilegiadas, bem como técnicas chamadas Take Take Take Take Take More: exatamente como navegar melhor, o livro mais barato, além de viajar pelo mundo. (Divulgação: eu prejudiquei. É realmente bom.)

Ao longo dos anos, Scott, assim como eu acabei sendo bons amigos desde o nosso compartilhado como economizar dinheiro quando viajamos. Sentei-me com ele para falar sobre seu livro, os truques para descobrir vôos acessíveis, bem como o que esperar em um mundo pós-Covid. (Embora algumas de suas dicas sejam centradas, para aqueles fora dos estados, ainda há algumas informações aqui que você descobrirá úteis.)

Nomadic Matt: Conte a todos sobre você. Exatamente como você entrou nisso?
Scott: Depois que me formei e comecei a trabalhar como jornalista mal pago, percebi que realmente esperava que viajasse para o exterior dependesse completamente da minha capacidade de descobrir vôos acessíveis. Eu me joguei no assunto, pesquisando e testando, além de descobrir por que a passagem aérea se comporta o método que ele faz, assim como todas as coisas que se pode fazer para obter o melhor custo possível em voos.

Tudo culminou em 2013, quando me deparei com a melhor oferta que já recebi pessoalmente na minha vida: sem parar de Nova York a Milão por uma ida e volta de US $ 130. Embora eu não tivesse planos de ver o Milão, quando vi essa tarifa, é claro, um dia óbrio geral. Não há lugar no mundo que eu não iria para US $ 130 ida e volta!

Quando voltei daquele voo, a notícia se espalhou para meus bons amigos e colegas de trabalho, assim como um por um, eles continuaram chegando tanto quanto eu com exatamente o mesmo pedido: “Ei Scott, da próxima vez que você descobrir um Ofereça assim, você pode me deixar entender para que eu possa obtê -lo também? ” Quando a 8ª pessoa me perguntou, percebi que não seria capaz de ter em mente todo mundo que eu precisava saber, então eu contava com a solução mais fácil: iniciar uma lista de e -mails simples. Eu não tinha conceito na época, no entanto, naquele momento, nasceu os vôos acessíveis de Scott.

Por que você compôs este livro?
Existe esse enigma estranho em nossas vidas: todos nós queremos viajar mais do que realmente.

Imaginei que poderia haver duas causas possíveis: tempo e dinheiro. Não é definitivamente o tempo suficiente para muitos, no entanto, não acredito que essa seja a situação para a maioria das pessoas. Acontece que mais da metade dos americanos não utiliza todas as suas férias, assim como coletivamente, deixamos cerca de um bilhão de dias de férias sem uso todos os anos.

Em vez disso, é o custo e o aborrecimento de reservar voos que impedem tantos de nossos sonhos de viagem. Além disso, já que a passagem aérea é a coisa mais tortuosa que compramos. A verdade de que essa coisa que exigimos para viajar é tão volátil e incompreensível nos leva a pagar demais para voos ou, pior ainda, passar as possíveis viagens.

Pense desta maneira: se você tivesse um código promocional que fez todos os seus futuros voos apenas US $ 200 ida e volta, você viajaria mais do que hoje? Para a maioria de nós, essa resposta é sim.

Em outras palavras, a menos que você ocorra um fundo fiduciário, vôos acessíveis são a chave que abre o mundo.

Para quem você acredita que tirar mais férias será prático?
Qualquer pessoa que sonha em viajar mais do que realmente, assim como qualquer pessoa que fique ansiosa toda vez que compra ingressos, pois não tem conceito exatamente como evitar pagar em excesso.

Um dos maiores conceitos errôneos do meu mundo é que os vôos acessíveis precisam ser vôos inconvenientes. Não é verdade! O voo que me levou a iniciar os vôos acessíveis de Scott, por exemplo, foi um voo sem escalas do United que descobri da cidade de Nova York para o Milão por uma ida e volta de US $ 130, incluindo duas sacolas inspecionadas.

Da mesma forma, mais uma grande falácia é que os vôos acessíveis são apenas para pessoas com flexibilidade total. Dediquei um capítulo inteiro de levar mais férias ao assunto da versatilidade, pois, com geral, vejo viajantes sacrificar involuntariamente sua capacidade de obter voos acessíveis dizendo a si mesmos “não tenho flexibilidade”.

Obviamente, alguém com versatilidade total tem muito melhor suas possibilidades de marcar uma ótima oferta do que alguém cujas datas e destinos estão trancados em pedra. No entanto, um dos erros mais caros que as pessoas fazem regularmente é acreditar sobre a versatilidade como um interruptor ligado/desligado, em vez de um interruptor mais escuro. “Não tenho flexibilidade” é uma armadilha auto-imposta que garantirá que seus sonhos de viagem nunca acabassem sendo mais do que isso. Quanto mais versatilidade você puder descobrir por si mesmo, mais melhores são as chances de obter um voo acessível.

Este livro não é apenas para crianças de 22 anos que tomam umpost-graduation trip to Europe. It’s for anyone hoping to travel more as well as better.

If it’s true that we’ve been living in the golden Age of affordable Flights, why do people so many people still overpay for airfare?
First as well as foremost, it’s since airfare behaves like nothing else we buy. When you buy bagels, the cost is essentially the exact same on any type of provided day, as well as it mainly depends upon exactly how many you buy. however when you buy flights, the cost is extraordinarily volatile. The exact same flight that costs $800 today may expense $300 tomorrow as well as $1,300 the next day. as well as the cost of a flight bears bit relation to exactly how far you travel. It generally costs more to fly from new York to Des Moines than from new York to Barcelona, for instance.

Given the complexity as well as volatility of airfare, cognitive biases cause us to overpay for flights. For instance, most of us utilize loss aversion when we’re booking flights; we fear a $300 boost more than we relish a $300 drop, so we pull the trigger on an costly flight since we’re worried it’ll get even more expensive.

Recency bias is one more one; if the fare stays put for a while, we may pull the trigger since we figure that’s just what the trip costs, without realizing that fare is likely to soon change. There’s likewise sunk expense fallacy—we get invested in the concept of a specific trip, as well as in spite of costly flights, decline to think about elsewhere.

And finally, great old procrastination! We put off buying tickets as well long as well as wind up booking flights last minute when they are, invariably, expensive.

Why do you believe so many false myths about affordable airfare (buy on Tuesday, remove your cookies, etc) persist when they are so clearly wrong? 

I believe it’s since airfare is so confusing. costs are constantly jumping around, seemingly at random, as well as sometimes fares seem to make no sense at all, like just recently when flights from Pittsburgh to Tokyo were offered for $316 roundtrip while a flight from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia expense $312 roundtrip.

That confusion leads people to see patterns that aren’t really correct or practical however seem to be a reasonable sufficient explanation. In the exact same way, a cent that comes up heads three times in a row isn’t really “due” for tails on the fourth flip, people make inferences about airfare since it offers some solace for a difficult-to-understand purchase.

And, so even though, as I explain in chapter 9, it’s not the situation that clearing your cookies makes flights cheaper, as well as it’s not the situation that flights are cheapest to book on Tuesday at 1pm, these myths persist since they explain what seems inexplicable. Fortunately, you as well as I are out right here doing our finest to mythbust!

In chapter 3, you discuss exactly how the method we’ve been searching for flights is backward. Conte-nos mais sobre isso.

Almost every overseas vacation I’ve taken in the past decade has been a trip I didn’t plan to take.

Roundtrip to Milan for $130. Osaka for $169. Barcelona $222. Brussels $225, twice.

I hadn’t organized to see Italy or Japan or Spain before buying flights to those extremely countries. It’s not that I wasn’t thinking about seeing those places—come on, it’s Europe as well as Japan—but, like most people, I have countless locations I’d like to see if airfare was no concern.

What prompted my rate of interest in those specific trips, in other words, was the truth that fares had dropped so precipitously.

The method most of us book our flights is a three-step process that most likely seems familiar:

Step 1: pick your destination

Step 2: pick your dates

Step 3: inspect for flights

We state we want affordable flights, however by setting airfare as the least important priority, is it any type of surprise that so many of us end up overpaying for flights? Knowingly or not, the most costly error we make when booking flights is selecting a trip rather than selecting a fare.

Fortunately, there’s a much better way, as well as it’s elegantly simple: Take that exact same three-step process as well as flip it on its head.

Step 1: See where there are affordable flights departing your house airport

Step 2: pick one of those affordable destinations

Step 3: pick one of the affordable dates

You’re enabled to have preferences, of course. I’m just motivating you to put airfare in context. few of us would go to a restaurant, reject the waiter’s offer to look at the menu, as well as order the ribeye with zero consideration for cost or other options.

But that’s precisely what many of us do with flights.

We set our heart on one specific vacation, cost be damned. If Prague is at the top of your list, would you still pay $1,000 for flights if you understood there were $250 flights to Paris?

What are three things you want people to take away from this book? 
First, the method we traditionally browse for flights is harming your capability to get a great deal. all of us state we want affordable flights, however our typical method of searching for flights inadvertently undercuts our capability to get affordable flights.

Instead, in many cases, the trick to getting affordable fares—and therefore getting three vacations of what you utilized to pay for one—simply boils down to making them the top priority. That doesn’t mean only traveling to close-by cities or taking inconvenient flights; on the contrary, with a much better approach, you can fly almost anywhere with affordable (and good) flights.

Second, acknowledging that airfare is exceptionally volatile. Destinations don’t have a single, steady price. Flights to Japan aren’t normally $202 roundtrip, except sometimes when they are (like they were just a few weeks ago). Today’s costly flight may be tomorrow’s affordable one, as well as vice versa.

Finally, affordable flights don’t just save money; they lead to much better trips by letting you experience more at your destination. They lead to more trips as well as boost your interim happiness since you understand the next one isn’t far off. as well as they broaden the kinds of locations you see as well as let you find locations that charm to you personally, rather than the typical tourist.

You’ve searched millions of flights. What are a few of the crazy insights you’ve discovered about airlines in that time? 
My preferred part about airfare is the funny anomalies. For instance, all of us believe of Thanksgiving as an exceedingly costly time to travel. as well as it is—for domestic flights. however Thanksgiving is really a hidden gem for affordable worldwide flights. That’s since all those people flying house to see household as well as eat turkey are, by definition, not flying overseas. With less competition for worldwide destinations, the fares are commonly rather cheap.

Similarly, I like the anomaly of exactly how when you’re traveling somewhere remote, it can be cheaper to split your trip into several itineraries rather than one. I phone call this the Greek Island Trick.

Say, for instance, you want to fly from nyc to Santorini. If you browse that path on Google Flights, fares commonly come back upwards of $1,600. however if you browse for flights from nyc to Athens, those on a regular basis go on sale for as bit as $350 roundtrip. as well as when you’re in Athens, you can hop a ferry or budget plan flight on to Santorini for as bit as $50. So by splitting your itinerary, you can wind up saving 75% off typical prices, as well as even take a few days to see Athens before heading over to Santorini!

Where do you see airfare going in a post-COVID world? I see short-term offers however long-lasting increases. Quais são seus pensamentos?
There’s a great deal of concern that as travel demand rebounds, that’ll be the end of affordable flights. however here’s why, on the contrary, I believe the future of affordable flights looks truly bright.

First, while the pandemic definitely woke many people as much as exactly how far airfare had fallen, what many people missed was that since 2015, we have been living in the golden Age of affordable Flights. The pandemic didn’t cause affordable fares. The pandemic *illuminated* affordable fares. So if a resurgence of travel rate of interest leads to pre-covid airfares, we should be so lucky!

The reason I’m so bullish on the continued long-lasting availability of affordable flights is that airline business designs have been revamped over the past few decades. go back 40 years back as well as airlines made most of their money on economic climate fares. Today, airlines make most of their money from other revenue streams: selling credit history cards as well as miles, premium tickets like business class, business contracts, cargo, as well as so on. In other words, airlines can pay for to offer you $250 flights to Europe or Japan since those fares are far less consequential to their bottom line than they utilized to be.

I believe it’s likely we’ll see headlines over the next few months about typical fares going up. Indeed, Airlines for America’s analysis already shows that typical fares have been steadily increasing since February.

And yet, during that time period, we’ve discovered roundtrip fares like $124 to Hawaii, $378 to Greece, as well as $202 to Japan. The key point to keep in mind next time you see a headline about flight costs increasing is this: You can’t book typical fares. You can only book offered fares.

Last question: You’re a guy who takes a great deal of flights. Do you have a preferred experience?
This is going to be sappy so I apologize in advance, however my preferred flight experience is flying with my young daughter. I’ve taken countless flights in my life, as well as while I still like being in the air, the magic has faded just a bit.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *