Finding Cheaper Vacations

So over the break, my husband informed me that he had gotten my spring break week off, hence we decided that if that could happen we would go on a REAL vacation since our honeymoon in 2006. I booked a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada. Now, my husband and I are not gamblers, and we plan to spend the majority of our time enjoying the strip and going to some fun and even free things!

Whatever place you go to, you can always find free stuff to do. I have been using tripadvisor.com to look for different fun things to do in Las Vegas. TripAdvisor provides an extensive list of things to do (in addition to hotels and flights and everything else associated with a trip somewhere) and also provides users the opportunity to publicly review these establishments. They are ranked and also given written reviews by customers. You can also simply google things like "free things to do in Las Vegas". Many travel sites have these lists for certain cities.

While I could say, "hey lets just do all the top things we can find that we would like to do", thats not efficient at all. Las Vegas is not a cheap city by any means, and I'm sure many of you know that if you have been there. If you're going to a show like the ever popular Cirque Du Soleil, it can cost anywhere from 100 to 200 dollars PER seat. There are certainly ways to cut corners, like going directly to the box office to see if they are undersold that day, and you may get them for cheaper. But certainly don't expect 30 dollars cheap.

In addition, I would really recommend booking online at travel booking sites like orbitz.com or hotwire.com. Personally, I have found that overall, orbitz.com has the cheapest prices for the same packages on other websites. The beauty of these sites is that they allow you to book your hotel and flight together, which usually saves hundreds sometimes thousands of dollars. For example, my flight (for one person), would have cost around $350 dollars round trip. Now, times that by two, and the hotel we will be staying at (a fabulous 5 star hotel on the strip) normally runs without the flight booked together at $230 per night. I instead got this trip for about 500 a person, which saved me about 800-900 dollars.

In addition, use the reviews of attractions, like on Orbitz or TripAdvisor, for example, to find where you can get cheaper prices. Often times, reviewers will say something along the lines of "Great show. Go to the big coke bottle next to the MGM Grand where you can get tickets for $37, rather than paying the full $54." Travelers are always full of good advice to give you, so take advantage! In addition, you may find when you investigate online there are cheaper tickets available simply for buying online, or there are certain dates that are cheaper. In Las Vegas, many popular attractions give 20 to 25% discounts for ordering online. Many websites for other attractions offer printable coupons to save you money.

So before you take a trip, investigate what you can online to find the best deal, you never know what you might find!