How To Use A VPN When Booking A Vacation And Save Money?

Booking a flight or vacation can be frustrating, especially considering that prices change by the minute. But have you ever wondered why the flight you checked last week suddenly costs a lot more? While you might assume that other individuals booked the seats you wanted, resulting in the price increase, the reality is a bit different.

Many airlines and hotel booking companies follow a dynamic pricing strategy, meaning they can increase fares based on various scenarios, including if you’ve been searching for the flight often. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution to this problem, and we’ll show you how you can book your vacations for the cheapest price possible using Surfshark VPN.

How do companies hike up their prices?

Before we delve into the solution, it’s important to understand the pricing strategy of travel companies.

While it’s no secret that popular holidays or seasons are used to increase prices, airlines often take it a step further. For instance, suppose you’ve been regularly planning a holiday and searching for flights. In that case, travel websites analyze this pattern and increase prices when it’s time for you to book tickets. This, obviously, results in extracting more profits from the end user.

Additionally, location plays a crucial role in determining prices. Countries with lower currency value tend to have cheaper flights, and vice versa. This means a person living in a first-world country has to pay a disproportionally greater amount for the same tickets. Moreover, certain airlines also offer special discounts for people from different countries.

Hotels aren’t much better, either! Companies like Trivago offer hotels at varying prices depending on a user’s geolocation.

To prove this statement, I planned an imaginary trip to Bali from New Delhi and visited websites like Skyscanner to check for flights. Over a week, I noticed the prices of these flights steadily increasing every time I conducted a new search related to the vacation. This indicates that websites do track our behavior and raise prices accordingly.

What is a VPN?

A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is a service that encrypts your data, including IP addresses, and allows users to spoof their location to any country in the world. This enables users to browse the internet without worrying about cookies tracking their behavior.

Furthermore, since a VPN masks your online activity, it also prevents travel websites from tracking your whereabouts and adjusting prices based on activity. Therefore, considering these benefits, using a VPN while booking a vacation becomes essential.

Now, the question remains: which VPN should you use? While there are a lot of VPNs on the market, it’s important to choose a trusted service, such as Surfshark VPN, to avoid potential threats.

How to save money when booking flights using Surfshark VPN?

Now that we understand the concept, let’s understand how you can save money. Start by installing Surfshark VPN on your device and logging in with your Google account.

Now, you just need to follow these simple steps –

1. Open the Surfshark app.
2. In the list of countries, find a country where the cost of living is lower.
   
3. Click “Quick Connect,” and you’re all set!
   

Once connected, I planned my hypothetical trip to Bali again, but this time by connecting to a VPN server in Thailand.

While I saw a price difference of about $4, it wasn’t significant. Then, I changed my VPN server to Cambodia and noticed a difference of about $24, which is substantial for someone traveling on a budget.

Therefore, if you want to save your hard-earned cash, we recommend trying out a VPN when booking your next vacation.

How can you save when booking hotels using Surfshark VPN?

Similar to flights, hotel prices vary drastically depending on the location. While you can try different VPN servers to check which place offers the lowest prices, hotels are generally cheaper if you use the VPN of the country you are planning to visit. Additionally, if this doesn’t work, we recommend trying a few countries in the EU, as they are sometimes cheaper than countries like Vietnam and Thailand.

Now that we have the explanation out of the way, let’s take the example of our Bali trip again. Without any VPN, one of the hotels I liked was costing $760 for a ten-night stay. After that, I connected to Indonesia’s VPN and the price differences were pretty apparent. The hotel that cost $760 was now only $726 for ten nights, saving me $34.

Other things to consider

While there are a million things one can do to save money, there are a few key additional steps you should take to maximize your savings:

1. Use Incognito Mode: Perhaps the oldest trick in the book, using incognito mode prevents sites like Booking.com from tracking your behavior and changing prices. To open an incognito tab, press Command+Shift+N on Mac or Control+Shift+N on Windows.
2. Clear Cookies: If you’ve visited a travel booking site before, there’s a good chance they have stored cookies in your browser. Therefore, clear your cookies before booking the flights. Go to chrome://settings/clearBrowserData to clear them.
3. Try Different Booking Websites: Since prices vary across different websites, visiting multiple sites to compare prices and deals is generally advisable.
4. Check the Cancellation Policy: Along with comparing prices, check the cancellation policies on different websites. Some offer 100% refunds, while others do not.