Lauren

Booking a holiday should be full of anticipation and excitement. You’ve decided where you are going, you’ve got a good deal on your holiday, you’ve persuaded a friend or two to accompany you, you’ve even bought a new wetsuit and boardies!

But disaster strikes when you go to book your flights! You don’t know where to start looking, and have been on the Ryanair website all day trying to find a cheap flight that doesn’t leave at midnight! You are about to book…… and the computer crashes! Aaaaarrgh!

Firstly ……DONT PANIC

It doesn’t have to be a hassle finding the cheapest flight deals if you know where to look. Follow our tips below and book your flights with ease.

1. Use the right website

There are loads of websites that promise to check all flights, but we’ve not found a better one than Skyscanner . You can search for flights from any airport plus you can search the whole month.  All the deals come up, including when prices are reduced to as little as £1 a flight!

2. Sign up for airline newsletters

Both Easyjet and Ryanair have email newsletters that will inform you of forthcoming flight discounts.  Sign up to ensure you know the exact date when the £1 flights come out for sale.  You’ll have the best choice of flights if you book your flight on the day the cheaper deals come out. Don’t forget to use  Skyscanner to pick the flights.

3. Be flexible

If you can travel on say, a Tuesday afternoon off-season, you’ll probably get a better flight deal than if you travel on a weekend, say Friday night and Sunday afternoon. The less popular travel times tend to have much lower prices. Plus if you work Mon-Friday you only lose one weekend travelling instead of two! Coming back to work midweek also means a shorter first week back, and Friday comes along so much more quickly!

4. Check for hidden extra costs like…….

Travelling with your surfboard

This is really important if you are thinking of travelling with your surf board. For example Ryanair charge you £30 each way to carry your surfboard if you book it in on-line when you book your seats, but increase this to £40 if you forget and have to book it in at the airport. Easyjet have similar, if slightly cheaper, charges of £18.50 and £26 per flight per board depending how you book.

For our tours we’d recommend you look at whether its cheaper to hire one of our surfboards rather than bring your own. See our France Surf Tour and Morocco Surf Tour pages to see our prices and also our Surf Tour Discounts page too. We actually offer you a discount if you bring your own board!

Luggage check-in

With Ryanair if  you check your baggage into the hold that’s a further £10 online or £20 at the airport each way. If you can, travel light and be ruthless when you pack – girls  – will you really wear those gold wedge espadrilles if you are going surfing all day? And Boys – you do generally travel light, but think twice about taking your laptop and other gadgets with you.

Payment methods

All airlines charge differently, but they often charge a payment handling fee. For example with Ryanair its £5, and an online booking fee of £5 if you don’t book by Visa Electron.

I’m not dissing either airline, hey they are cheap flights after all, but you should always be aware of what the actual price will be before you go ahead and book.

5. Travel outside of the school holidays

You generally get better flight deals at times when children are in school than over the busy holiday periods. On our tours we only travel outside of these peak times. This means cheaper flights, less crowds – especially on the surf breaks, and more fun!

We travel to Morocco in January, and France in June and September.  These are great times for surf, and avoid the mass rush of crowds to the beach that always happens in say, December and August.

6. Budget

You’ll have more money to play with on holiday if you try and save a bit each week before you go. Swap the pint after work for a walk home or a run in the evening for a few of weeks and you could save around £50, which would almost cover the cost of taking your board with you! Plus you’d be lot fitter, which would help your surfing!

7. Don’t compare once you are there

There’s nothing more depressing than chatting to a fellow surfer to find out they paid 1p for the same flight you were on, but you paid £45! This may well happen, but don’t let it spoil your holiday. Besides, if you folow our tips you could be the 1p traveller too!