If You Aren't Saving on Travel, You're Doing Something Wrong

Hacks, Discounts and money saving travel tips

GENERAL

7/3/20266 min read

black and silver dslr camera on brown wooden table

This year I have saved my family over £800 on a family holiday — not through some elaborate hustle or a budget airline that charges you to breathe, but through a handful of tools I now use as part of my daily life and they automatically kick in before every single trip. Most people aren't using any of them. Some of them take about four minutes to set up.

Here's what's actually worth your time.

1. Collect Avios on everything you already spend money on

If you haven't got a British Airways American Express card, this is the single highest-impact thing I can suggest. You earn 1 Avios per £1 on the free card, or 1.5 Avios per £1 on the Premium Plus (£325/year). They add up faster than you'd expect from your weekly shop, bills, subscriptions — the spending you're doing anyway.

The real magic is in the sign-up bonus. The standard card gives you 5,000 Avios once you spend £2,000 in the first three months. The Premium Plus gives you 30,000 Avios for £6,000 spend in the same window — which is enough for return flights to Europe in off-peak economy.

Right now, applying through my referral link gets you 31,000 Avios once you're approved, on top of the standard spend requirement — no extra hoops. Apply here

To put 31,000 Avios in perspective: that's comfortably enough for;

one off-peak short-haul return to Europe (these start from around 20,000 Avios plus a few pounds in taxes), with roughly 11,000 left over towards your next trip.
Put it all towards long-haul instead and it's a solid chunk of a London–New York economy return, which runs about 55,000 Avios off-peak plus £250–£450 in taxes and carrier charges — not quite there on its own, but a serious head start.

Avios aren't just for flights either. You can use them to part-pay on BA holidays, top up seats, or even for car hire and hotels through the Avios site.

If you spend £15,000 on the Premium Plus in a cardmember year, you also earn a companion voucher: pay Avios plus taxes for your own seat and bring someone else in the same cabin for free. It covers every cabin including First, it's valid for 24 months, and there's no cap on how many Avios you put toward the paying seat. It's the benefit that makes the card genuinely worth it for anyone doing a big trip every year or two, rather than just topping up.

One honest caveat: none of this works if you're carrying a balance. The value only exists if you're putting spending you were doing anyway on the card and clearing it in full every month — the interest on a rolling balance will wipe out any points you earn many times over. If that's not realistically how you use a credit card, skip this one.

2. TopCashback — the one that most people ignore

TopCashback is a cashback site, which means you click through to a retailer via their platform, book exactly as normal, and get a percentage of what you spent back into your account. It takes about 30 seconds to do. You're leaving money behind every time you don't use it.

The travel rates right now are genuinely worth paying attention to:

Hotels.com — up to 11% back (12% via the app). On a £600 hotel stay, that's £60–£72 back in your account.
Holiday Extras airport parking — up to 50% cashback. This one always surprises people. Airport parking is expensive and this brings it down significantly.
Holiday Extras car hire — up to 12.6% back.
Discover Cars — up to 30% cashback on car rental bookings.
Skyscanner — up to 5.25% back when you book flights through.
Booking.com — around 4.5% back.

Rates fluctuate, so always check the site before you book — but there's almost always something running. The key habit is simple: before you book anything travel-related, open TopCashback first, find the retailer, and click through from there.

The £800 we saved this year was largely this: hotel cashback, airport parking cashback, and car hire cashback combined. It stacks up.

If you aren't using Topcashback yet you can get a £10 sign up bonus now.

3. Set a flight price alert and just wait

Most people search for flights, see a price, panic, and book. A much better approach: search on Kiwi.com, toggle price alerts on the results page (or tap the bell icon in the app), add your email, and let it do the waiting for you. You'll get notified the moment the fare on your route drops.

This works best when you've got flexibility of a few weeks either side. I've saved anywhere from £40 to £180 per person just by waiting for the alert rather than booking the first price I saw.

Two other things Kiwi.com does that Google Flights and Skyscanner don't: virtual interlining, which stitches together separate airlines (even ones that don't normally partner) into one cheaper itinerary, and Price Lock, which holds a fare for up to 72 hours so you can grab it before it moves while you finalise dates. If you're booking connecting flights on different tickets, their self-transfer guarantee also covers you if you miss a connection — worth knowing before you assume it's riskier than booking direct.

4. Wise card for spending abroad

If you're still using your regular bank card abroad and paying 2–3% foreign transaction fees, stop. The Wise card converts at the real mid-market exchange rate with low fees, and there's no monthly charge. For a two-week family holiday, the difference can easily be £50–£100 depending on what you're spending.

It takes ten minutes to set up, tops.

5. Stop paying your network £6 a day to roam

If you're switching on roaming through EE, Vodafone, O2, or Three and watching £6 a day vanish for the privilege, that's a week away costing you £42 before you've bought a coffee. An eSIM gets you a local data plan in minutes, straight to your phone, no physical SIM to hunt down at the airport.

Airalo is the one I reach for most — a 10-day, 5GB plan covering most of Europe comes in around £12–15 total, not per day. They've also got a promo code running until the end of the year: use NEWTOAIRALO15 at checkout for 15% off, on top of what you're already saving versus roaming. For destinations where local data runs pricier (the US and Japan, typically), look for one of their unlimited-data plans — worth it if you're navigating and uploading photos constantly.

Setup takes five minutes: buy the plan, scan the QR code, and it activates the moment you land. Most phones from the last few years support it — check under Settings > Mobile Data > Add eSIM before you travel, not while you're stood in arrivals. Your usual number stays active on your physical SIM for calls and texts if you still need them.

On a two-week trip, that's £70-plus back in your pocket versus daily roaming charges — enough to cover a decent dinner out.

6. Book your European rail pass now, not in August

If a multi-country European trip is anywhere on your radar this year, this is worth acting on rather than bookmarking. Rail Europe has 20% off Global and Selected One Country Eurail and Interrail Passes right now — but the offer ends 18 July, so there's a real deadline here, not a "sale" that quietly runs all summer.

A Global Pass gets you unlimited train travel across up to 33 countries within a set window, which is the whole appeal for multi-stop trips — you book the pass once and skip pricing out individual legs country by country. Even if you're only doing two or three countries, the Selected One Country passes at the same discount are worth checking before you default to booking single tickets.

Worth deciding on your route before you buy, since passes are priced by how many travel days you use within the validity window — a pass sat half-used isn't actually a saving.

The mindset shift

None of these are complicated or time-consuming once they're habits. The issue is most people think of travel savings as something that requires effort — hunting deals, being flexible, flying at 5am. These don't. They're just the smarter version of what you were going to do anyway.

Set up the Amex card. Create a TopCashback account. Buy the eSIM before you fly, not at the gate. That's most of the work done.

For more practical guidance on booking smarter — from multi-stop trips to carry-on packing lists — the travel guides section at The Travel Log has everything in one place.

And if you want this kind of thing in your inbox every Friday, the newsletter is exactly that — subscribe and we'll send you an updated list of discount codes every week. This week's is on airport transfers and eSIM cards. Sign up below.