Off-Season Vacation Deals
Traveling during off-peak times can help cut costs.
By traveling during less-popular times, travelers without such a strict schedule can benifit from off-season deals.
So you’ve been saving up all of your vacation days and are finally ready to take a vacation. The only thing is that you still can’t afford one.
Typically in travel brochures, the price for an all-inclusive vacation, or just a plain flight and hotel package, seem to be very highly priced. Over $2000 for one week? You can probably do better. These rates are the rack rates for vacations, which are usually the highest possible rates that the room can go for – but that doesn’t mean that it does. There is usually no need to pay these rates as they are usually a lot more money that you should be paying for the room.
For a Cheap Adults Only-ish Vacation
This one’s a no-brainer. Most resorts that market themselves as an Adults Only environment usually cater to a particular audience – one who does not want a vacation ruined by little kids. Often, these vacationers are willing to pay more for a relaxing, quiet trip, but they don’t necessarily need to.
When it comes to families traveling with children who are in school, chances are the only times that they can go on a vacation longer than a weekend is during school breaks, those bring winter/Christmas vacation, reading week, March break and summer vacation. Since these times are the only times that they can travel, families often have no choice but to pay higher rates because it comes down to simply paying a higher rate or not going at all.
For those of you who have little or no limitations about what times of the year they can travel, you’re in luck. Prices tend to drop dramatically during the less popular times. For example, the beginning of December and the end of January tend to be much cheaper than the few weeks before and after the New Year and, since parents prefer not to pull their child out of school for a week, at these times, there will be less children around the resort.
Here’s an example: for an all-inclusive vacation in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic including airfare from Toronto, Ont. for one week from Feb 1 to Feb 8 is, based on double occupancy, $813CAD. For the same hotel, same room category (superior room), from March 7 to March 14 (March Break) is $1434 per person.
Although these prices are applicable to the 2008 season, fear not if you are reading this post-February or March. These kinds of prices happen every year.
*these prices were found on January 28th 2008 at www.sunwing.ca
Hurricanes, Schmurricanes…
Another great time to travel to the Caribbean is during the summer months. Although it is hurricane season, the chances of a hurricane hitting the island that you are staying on isn’t all that high. Due to the fear that most people have of hurricanes though, this leaves many resort rooms available, and most are willing to lower the price of their rooms if it means having guests stay there. It’s also a much quieter time of the year to vacation since it’s not as popular as the winter months, so chances are the resort or hotel that you are staying at will be pretty empty.
As well, there are many hotels that have a severe weather policy, be it a discount off of your next stay or some sort of upgrade, if a few days of your stay are ruined by bad weather, you might just be a little closer to being able to afford to come back the next time.
