Bargain destinations and the cheapest places to travel


Budget Travel’s Free Travel Guide

April 3rd, 2006 Posted in Travel bargains, Travel industry, Vacation deals

Not all of these will be applicable to your own situation, but kudos to Budget Travel Magazine for this “Free Travel Guide” in their current issue. Some of the tips are a bit obscure and finding a housesitting gig is not exactly easy. But house-swapping and hospitality exchange programs are quite easy to pull off.

For a list of direct links to house swap programs and where to find a place to crash for nothing, go here.

Maybe it’s just me, but Budget Travel magazine seems to be getting better and more useful all the time. And I like the attitude. Editor Erik Torkells notes in the beginning of this issue how he was recently a guest speaker at a roundtable lunch of travel magazine editors. He represented the only magazine that is not going after the five-star travel crowd. An (unnamed) panelist is quoted as saying, “That’s the secret of our business. In an advertising-based industry, you don’t want to promote inexpensiveness…”

Most people don’t travel the way most magazines present travel. The publishers just like to act that way so they can pull in ads for luxury sports cars and diamond-studded watches. Treat those other magazines as eye candy, not as something that will really help you plan your own journeys.

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  3. The Travel Mag Disconnect
  4. Guide to Real Estate in Latin America
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  1. 2 Responses to “Budget Travel’s Free Travel Guide”

  2. By Bernie Mischel on Apr 3, 2006

    Just a note of thanks – you give advice to real world working people travelers. Bernie

  3. By nan on Apr 11, 2006

    Interesting to read this post – I dropped in on a travel convention a few weeks ago, not knowing what to expect. You probably know what I found – hundreds of booths advertising packages and tours, all priced at a premium. There was only one company that offered an experience I couldn’t arrange better myself in an hour on the internet. Honestly, who travels that way? How many people fall into that particular overlap of the categories “money to burn” and “too nervous to figure out their own itinerary?” I just flat don’t get it.

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