When is the best time to book tickets? What is more profitable: tours or independent travel

Rubles. These are real examples of cheap holiday packages that I have found over the past year. Find out where and how to find such last-minute tours.

This guide is two years old. Being an avid traveler and hunter for cheap tours, I have presented my experience and knowledge on finding cheap tours. Learn how to relax without spending too much!

Rules for finding and buying the cheapest tours:

1. Buy tours online

Travel agencies on the street sell tours for more than online tour search engines. The last time I bought a ticket at the office of a travel agency was back in 2012. Then convenient and reliable online tour search services appeared - now I use only them. I no longer go to the offices of greedy travel agencies - it is more convenient and more profitable to buy tickets on the Internet.

Why are travel agencies more expensive? The reason is the human factor - cunning managers in travel agencies in every possible way untwist the client to buy a more expensive tour package. They fundamentally do not want to sell tours for 5, 10, 20 thousand - a percentage of such transactions is not enough for them, they need more gold!

Where to look for cheap tours online? I use three search engines: , and . All three are reliable and very comfortable. Choose which one you like best.

Install mobile app. Travelata has an excellent application: download it for or and use the current promotional code when buying a tour MobilizeMe- you will receive a discount of 1000 rubles for any tours costing from 50,000 rubles. Valid until August 14, 2018.

How do tour search engines work? They compare prices among 130 popular tour operators and find the cheapest tours. Finding and booking a tour on your own is easy. You see the full information on the tour: hotel, flight, meals, reviews of tourists and so on. You choose the tour you like. Got questions? Ask them to the consultant in a chat or by phone. Secure online payment by credit card. The tour can also be purchased in installments.

Offices and consultants. All three search engines have offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and other major cities. There is also a hotline support service. So it's easy to interact with them.

Advantages of buying tours online:

Big choice. Compare prices from all tour operators to find the cheapest tour. Compare - save!
Convenient and fast. No need to go to travel agency offices, waste time on the road, waiting and communication. You can find and book a tour in 15-30 minutes at home or at work. When buying last-minute tours, speed is especially important: I found a cheap ticket - I bought it in a couple of clicks, until it disappeared.
Safely. Search engines work only with reliable tour operators. Payment is made using a secure protocol. There is a 24/7 support service.
Independence. I recommend looking for and buying tours on your own. So it is more reliable - you know better than any person what exactly you need and at what price. There is no interference from others - there is no possibility to confuse you. In offices, managers are often cunning or simply incompetent.
Documents - immediately. When buying a tour online, all bookings and confirmations will be sent to the mail immediately after payment. In an ordinary agency, employees like to delay issuing documents - we passed, we know.
Reliably. Large online search engines, and with a large customer base and a well-known name, I trust. Tour agencies with colorful names like "Cactus", "Sea of Dreams" or "Marina Travel", scattered along the streets of Russian cities - no.

(Photo © club-med-discover / flickr.com / Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)

2. Be flexible with deadlines and dates

Often we have many restrictions: rigidly fixed vacation days, personal affairs and obligations. However, try to achieve as much freedom as possible in choosing dates - this will save you money.

See different departure days. Vacation starts on Monday and you found a tour for that day for 50 thousand? Check departures on Tuesday or Wednesday - suddenly there are tours for 30 thousand. I encounter this on a regular basis.

Change your rest time. Often (not sometimes, but often!) tours for 7 nights are cheaper than tours for 5 nights, tours for 10 nights are cheaper than tours for 8 and so on. Do not limit yourself - check all the options!

Take a look at the site's price calendar. Often vouchers for 7 nights are cheaper than vouchers for 3 nights:

3. Be flexible in choosing a resort

If you are monogamous, who prefers to go on vacation to the same place every year, then the question of choosing a direction is not worth it for you. I recommend to everyone else to consider different resorts - your chances of buying a cheap tour will increase.

How does direction affect price?

There are traditionally expensive destinations ( , ). There are cheap directions ( , ).
Seasonality plays an important role: it is cheaper to fly to some resorts in summer, to others in winter, and to others in spring or autumn.
There are also random factors. For example, a tour operator sold few tours in one of the directions and decided to lower prices - last-minute tours appear.

Do you want to buy the cheapest tour? See as many directions as you can. Compare not only countries, but also individual resorts of the same country.

(Photo © RyanMBevan / flickr.com / Licensed CC BY 2.0.)

4. Buy tours from Moscow

It is for flights from Moscow that you can find the cheapest tours. Competition and a developed system of air transportation reduce prices. Sometimes the difference in price compared to other cities is colossal.

What should a non-capital tourist do?

First, check if you can find a cheap tour from your city. Found? Great - take it! If not, then it is worth expanding the geography of departure cities.

See if there are cheap tours from neighboring cities or from Moscow. You can get to the point of departure on your own: by bus, train or plane. Pobeda flies to Moscow from many Russian cities - tickets cost from 1000 rubles. I myself live in the provinces, and I fly from Moscow on vacation.

All situations are different - there is no one solution. Compare prices and decide what is best for you: pay more and fly from your city or save money but spend time on the road to another city.

Look at the examples below. I compared the cost of trips to Cyprus from Moscow and Yekaterinburg. A tour from the capital can be bought much cheaper. If you fly to Moscow on your own, you can save a lot of money.

5. Use Smart Search

(Photo © Fred Postles / flickr.com / Licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

6. Trust fortune

For those who want to buy the cheapest tour, prudent tour operators have come up with the Fortune system.

How it works? You do not buy a tour to a specific hotel, but only choose its level: 2 stars, 3 stars, and so on. The tour operator himself decides in which hotel of the selected category you will be accommodated. You don't have to be a psychic to guess your future hotel. Just find the cheapest one in the list of options - they will send you there. There is only one exception - the hotel is already full. Then you will be settled in the next one at a low price. Tour operators do not always offer "Fortune": if tours for this system are available, you will see them in the search results.

How much can you save? A tour of "Fortune" usually costs 2-3 thousand rubles cheaper than other tours. Look at the description and reviews for the cheapest hotel in the desired resort. If the hotel suits you, buy a tour of "Fortuna".

Is it worth the risk? My opinion is no. It is better to overpay a little and choose an adequate hotel without surprises. Usually the cheapest hotel has a bad location and many shortcomings. But often does not mean always! If you want to save money and are not too pretentious, then you can go on vacation along Fortuna. Look at reviews of cheap hotels and decide according to the situation.

(Photo © Unique Properties (UP) / flickr.com / Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)

7. Book early

Buy a tour in advance or catch a last minute one? This question is asked by many tourists. Both early booking and buying a tour at the last moment provide an opportunity to save money. Each option has its pros and cons.

Early booking. Minus: discounts are usually not as big as when buying last-minute tours. Plus: you can choose any hotel to your taste, relax beautifully and pleasantly. This is a winning option in terms of price - quality ratio.

Hot tours. Buying a tour at the last moment is often very profitable. Pros: big discounts, sometimes vouchers are generally given for a penny. Minus two. Firstly, there is no guarantee that a cheap last minute tour will appear for your destination on the dates you need. At the last moment, prices can either go down or go up. This game is quite exciting. The second drawback is that in the high season all the best hotels will be already booked, you will have to choose from second-rate options.

Conclusion. If you need a tour anywhere and as cheaply as possible, catch last-minute tours just before departure. If the quality of rest is a priority, then buy a tour in advance (optimally - 2-3 months in advance). You will receive both an early booking discount and a wide selection of hotels.

See also others about how to travel cheaper and more interesting.

(Photo © Frank Lammel / flickr.com / Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Intro Image Source: © Aris Gionis / flickr.com / Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Tour operators with whom it works (in terms of reliability): Coral Travel, TUI, Tez Tour, Sunmar, AnexTour, Pegas Touristik, NTK-Intourist, Biblio Globus, Mouzenidis Travel, PAC group and others.

Cities, with a departure from which you can pick up a tour: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Ufa, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don, Perm, Tyumen and many others.

Leisure destinations: Russia (Sochi, Adler, Crimea, Anapa, etc.), Abkhazia, Cyprus, Greece, Thailand, India, Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Tunisia, Vietnam, Israel and many others.

To travel as often as possible, you need to be able to find the best prices for tours, flights and hotels. I have already written about the independent search for tickets and choosing a hotel more than once, but I have not yet talked about vouchers. Today I will give out all the services and sites where I look for cheap tours, and tell you how you can save money on a vacation organized by a tour operator.

How to look for cheap tours?

When going on vacation, I always consider both options - an independent trip, and buying a tour. From Siberia, it is cheaper and more convenient to get to many places by tour (although this limits you in choosing a hotel and rest period). At the same time, I do not trust the choice of the country, resort and even the hotel to a travel agent - I select everything exclusively on my own and very carefully. To do this, I have several sites in my bookmarks, special mailing lists come to the mail, and an application is installed on my phone. As soon as the next trip appears in the plans, I begin to study all the offers in all services, and in the end I find the perfect one.

Subscribe to all newsletters in advance, even if you have not yet decided on the dates, budget and vacation period
Do not limit yourself to one country - you can have a good rest everywhere, so keep track of all possible resorts
Play with the timing - often a tour for 13 days costs only a few thousand cheaper than 10
Consider neighboring regions - there are no cheap tours from Omsk? See Yekaterinburg or Novosibirsk
In the search, fill in not only your favorite "All inclusive", but also "FB" (breakfast, lunch, dinner) or even "HB" (tomorrow + dinner) - with a sufficient difference in price, this option may well pay for itself. In addition, some good hotels in Europe do not operate with all inclusive, so you may miss them.
Keep an eye on hotel ratings, but don't get stuck on them - often newer hotels with no rating at all are offered at a good price, and in order to earn a good reputation, they will try to please the first customers. Also check the rating on several sites, and be sure to read the negative reviews (often people give low ratings completely unreasonably)
Do not discard options with (when you are sent to any hotel of a certain star rating), but do not take risks if the price difference is not high. It is worth traveling around Fortuna only with tour operators with a good reputation, and be prepared for the fact that you may not like the hotel. This is a good option for countries where you spend most of your time outside the hotel.
Do not mess with , especially if they offer very low prices.
Sometimes it is beneficial to take the cheapest tour and use it as a ticket, and book the hotel yourself. Just keep in mind that often you need to show yourself to the tour operator so that you are not removed from the return flight. In general, tell the meeting guide at the airport that you are planning to live in another hotel, and he will tell you what to do in this case.
From my experience, good prices for tours are usually in late April-May and after mid-September-October.
Vouchers to visa countries often burn, so it makes sense to make a Schengen in advance and watch for offers (just keep in mind that if this is your first entry into Europe, you must definitely go to the country that issued the visa). And by the way, you can enter Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania using the Cypriot multivisa, which is done free of charge in just a few days

9 services for finding inexpensive tours

1 Moihottur.ru

Last minute site Moihottur.ru

I want to start with my favorite site - www.moihottur.ru When I have free time, I like to go to it and even just see what the deal is at the moment with prices for tours in my and neighboring cities. It was on this site that at one time we found our mega for Fortuna, and then a ticket to Dubai for 8000 rubles per person, which we used just as tickets (although according to reviews the hotel was not bad, but it was in Sharjah, and we needed be in Dubai). It is convenient that on this site, in addition to ready-made selections, there is also a search engine with which you can select a ticket according to the desired parameters. That's exactly what we were looking for ours this year. I also want to note a very good support service - I asked a question, they called me back quite quickly, and then they sent several hotel options to the post office according to the parameters I mentioned. At the same time, the service cannot be called intrusive, the girl called back once, but after finding out that we had already purchased the tour elsewhere, she said goodbye to me very nicely.

More hot tours on bankturov.ru

The website Bankturov.ru is similar to Moihottur.ru, but personally it seems to me less convenient and, to be completely honest, less beautiful. Vouchers both sites post about the same, but the price may differ by a couple of thousand. It is convenient that Bankturov.ru has an e-mail newsletter, which allows you to receive all last-minute offers directly to your mail every day.

3 level.travel

Selection and purchase of tours online at level.travel

Now, services for online ordering tours are gaining more and more popularity, thanks to which you do not need to leave your home at all and go to a travel agent. You select a tour on the site and immediately pay for it by card. All necessary documents are sent to you by mail. It seems to me that the future belongs to such services, at least for those people who can choose a hotel on their own. But it will take time for the sites to earn a serious enough reputation that you can safely buy tours through them. In the end, it was also once scary to buy air tickets on the Internet on “some obscure sites”.

There are two services in my bookmarks at the moment - and When we were looking for a tour to Rhodes, I noticed that the results on these two sites are different, so I recommend viewing both. Even if you do not dare to buy a ticket online, you can use these services simply as search engines.

4. Mobile application and website Travelata.ru

I recently installed an application for searching and buying on my phone - I used to use their website, but the application is many times more convenient. I love services that are constantly developing and supplementing, while they look stylish and, to be honest, help me find cheap tours. Go and download the application (or use the site - as you are used to).

It is very convenient that the cost of the tour is shown on Travelata immediately with the fuel surcharge (unlike, for example, the same moihottour) - it annoys me wildly when, after loading the tour, its price increases by several thousand due to the surcharge.

And one more nice bonus - a tour in Travelata can be paid for in two payments of 50%. One payment is made when booking the tour and the second - within 3 days from the date of confirmation. Not the biggest delay, of course, but still convenient. I myself have not yet bought tickets through this service, but since I decided to participate in their lottery for 100 rubles and received a 1000 rubles coupon for any tour, I may soon try to buy a tour on Travelata.

5 Sletat.ru application

This is a version for computers, but I like the Sletat.ru app

It was with his help that we found our superb hotel in Rhodes for quite reasonable money, although before that, of course, we had to look at a whole bunch of options. It is convenient that the application is always with you on your phone, and you can poke around in tours at any convenient time. You can sort the results by hotel names and, for example, remove tour operators that you do not want to fly with. Each hotel in the application has a rating and reviews, which is very convenient at the initial stage of selection (later, of course, you need to read reviews on other services). In addition, you can sign up for a tour and if the price for it drops, you will receive a notification on your phone. By the way, this is also true for already purchased vouchers, for example, our friends talked to the tour operator to change their hotel to a more expensive one after the price of the purchased voucher decreased by several thousand rubles.

The main assistant for independent travelers Piratesru.com

Almost all independent travelers are subscribed to the site, as the most interesting offers for air tickets and tours are posted here several times a day. Personally, I really like their air pickups from Moscow and St. Petersburg, but more on that another time. For those who are looking for cheap tours, it is very useful to view publications in the TOURS section. Most of the offers, of course, come from the capital, but sometimes there are interesting options from other Russian cities.

Not very convenient professional travel portal Tourdom.ru

I have the exchange of the professional tourist portal Tourdom in my bookmarks and occasionally I look at it, but I have never really used it. Every day, information is collected here about last-minute and canceled tours, as well as charter tickets that can be purchased without paying the hotel. Some tours can be purchased here on the site online.

8 Triphunter.club (Instagram)

All interesting tours and tickets in Triphunter.club profile

I follow these guys on Instagram, and often they replace all of the above resources. Every day on the site and in their own social networks, the cheapest tours (and air tickets) are posted, however, mainly with a departure from Moscow or St. Petersburg. Many offers are taken explicitly from the same Piratesru.com, but if you are most often on Instagram, then subscribing to this profile will be very useful.

9 Instagram

And a few more tours here Uletimru

Travelers Anton and Irina Konstantinov maintain a very useful Instagram account (as well as a Telegram channel). The guys themselves daily look through the promotions of the airline and the offers of tour operators and post interesting finds. Most of all here, of course, it is air tickets, but tours often slip through, so I highly recommend subscribing.

Bonus

Since I look through all these services every day, my head is torn from a variety of cheap tours and air tickets. I recently realized that I can't keep it to myself and launched an Instagram profile. travel_price.ru. Here I post offers for the inhabitants of the "trans-Urals", and many of them I myself look for especially for my instagram. Subscribe and travel cheap!

Having a good and inexpensive vacation abroad is not at all such an impossible task as it seems at first glance. The main thing is to be at the right time in the right place. In this, the proposals called "burning" will help you in many ways.

There have already been many warnings on this issue, but maybe it’s worth just figuring out once how to spoil such a long-awaited vacation? Let's dispel such a myth-shrouded issue as "hot tours".

Myth #1. A hot tour is a tour that tourists bought, but refused to go a few days before departure.

Nobody refused anything. In reality, the situation is as follows: the tour operator pays partners in advance for the components of the tour: air tickets, insurance, transfer, visas (these are constant amounts that make up the cost of the tour).

There is another element that forms the price of the tour - this is the price of the hotel. So, in the event that the planned number of seats on the plane is not filled, the company (often at a loss to itself) in recent days reduces the cost of the hotel in order to fill the plane, since all the seats on the flight are paid in advance.

So the price drops due to the fact that the operator lowers the price of the hotel. Please note that the price of the tour falls not in a specific company, but in all those cooperating with a specific tour operator.

Myth #2. Cheap is good.

Rest is rest. And believe me, there are some hotels that will ruin your vacation, even if you were ready to live in terrible conditions, in order to save money. But upon arrival, you will understand that you should have bought a more expensive tour, then the vacation would have taken place in normal conditions and you would have eaten well.

Such hotels, which in fact and the amount you paid, are not worth it in every country. You can view their list on the company's website. Also, every tourist should get acquainted with the reviews about the hotel. But remember that the sweetest can be artificially sweet.

Keep in mind that the prices of tours are very dependent on the season. The hotel where your friends rested in May may not be available for you in August, as it will cost at least twice as much.

So beware of the cheapest hotels and those agencies that sell exclusively cheap tours. This means that the company does not care about the quality of your holiday, they just need to sell the tour.

Myth number 3. Before buying, you need to call a lot of companies.

The fact is that travel companies are a kind of shops that sell products of travel operators. So if there is a good tour, then it will be with different agencies at the same time.

The range of offers of a travel company can only be expanded through cooperation with several tour operators. And the cost of the same hotel for different operators may be different.

So, if you want a large list of offers from which you can choose the perfect tour, go to an agency that partners with several operators at the same time.

Myth #4. The closer to departure, the cheaper it is.

You should not expect or wish for a company of low demand for a particular flight. If this does not happen, you may end up without a ticket.

If you like the price of the tour, don't wait for the last days, book now. And then instead of getting an even lower price, you may generally miss the opportunity to fly there, then from the city that suits you.

Myth number 5. It is not profitable to book in advance.

The fact is that in winter the spring tour is much cheaper. Also, if the demand for certain flights is initially high and tickets sell like hot cakes in the last days, when there are single seats left for the flight, travel companies raise the price of these seats. Because they know that they will be bought anyway, as demand is high.

If you see a good hotel at a bargain price, know that you are not the only one seeing this offer. And from this it follows that places can be bought, you just take a risk.

Book a tour immediately if you like it. In addition, expensive and bad hotels are the last to be bought up.

Myth number 6. I myself (a) will find a tour on the Internet.

It is quite logical that you may ask yourself the following question: "Why can't I find my own tour on the Internet if the managers do the same." And to some extent you are right. You can find out sites where tour agents are looking for, you can learn how to use them, you can even find time to compare prices for tours of different operators.

But in order to find the optimal hotel, so that it is really good, it takes many years of experience to confirm that it matches the description in reality. This is all the data, the information that managers collect during their work.

So, in order to choose a great tour option, you need to become an experienced manager. In addition, a small detail - tour operators do not have the right to sell tours to individuals.

Myth #9. Buying a tour directly from a tour operator is much cheaper.

We return to the last sentence of the previous paragraph. Firstly, it is impossible, operators do not cooperate with individuals. How if you bought from Tez Tour?

But the fact is that you bought from an authorized agency that sells at the same price as other travel companies.

So, it is worth thinking about the honesty of the agency, which tells customers that the tour they bought is being sold by the Tez Tour operator itself.

Myth number 7. You can always think of another day.

Understand, a tour is not a blouse that is sold in a store. The same tour can suit many clients.

And since companies sell products of tour operators (as we have already found out), if a tour was bought in one company, it disappears in another company automatically. Hurry up to buy a great tour.

Myth number 8. The bigger the discount, the cheaper.

Ask not the size of the discount, but the final price offered at a discount. Because you can always raise the original price of the tour to increase the discount.

For example, there are often situations when a tour, which is inexpensive in our company, is sold at big discounts in many agencies, but the cost is still higher there.

Myth No. 10. First, you need to choose a hotel by phone, and then buy a tour to this hotel in the agency.

The fact is that you are flying out a specific hotel is attached to a specific date, which may not suit you. In addition, by the time you get to the travel company, the rooms in this hotel can be sold out.

Almost all clients who immediately say which hotel they want to stay in end up buying a tour to another hotel. So be guided by the dates you need, the cost and the package of services that you want to receive.

So, in order to profitably buy a last-minute tour, you should contact the agency that cooperates with a large number of tour operators.

You should also study in advance the list of hotels where it is better not to stay, but do not immediately choose the one where you want to stay. And do not delay the purchase to the last, otherwise you risk losing your tidbit.

At the height of the summer season, most conversations are about vacation: how and where to spend it. The dream of each of us is to relax in comfort in a decent hotel with a decent level of service and, preferably, pay half the price for it. Then we can consider that the vacation was a success. Usually, this becomes possible when buying a "last minute" ticket. The appearance of such tours is almost inevitable, because travel agencies buy places on planes and hotels even before the start of the holiday season. The number of these purchased seats is calculated on the basis of forecasts and calculations for the previous season, i.e. it is only approximate. And for sure, no company knows how many tickets will be sold. A few days before the date of arrival, the travel agency begins to significantly reduce the prices of unsold tours in order to somehow justify the investment. The closer the day of departure, the more the tour is on fire. Therefore, in the very last days before departure, a ticket can be purchased at a very significant discount - up to 50%. But not everything is so simple, there is a large list of nuances that you should be prepared for, counting on a "burning" tour. :f:

Internet
a list of hotels that suit you in terms of the quality of services provided
readiness to fly the very next day after buying a tour
information about the host country and the hotel

Tune in to the fact that the “burning” tour is roulette. You may be lucky, and you will have a great rest, saving a lot, or you can completely fly over with a vacation and stay in a stuffy apartment, because. The tickets you need are not available. We can say that last-minute tours are for those who are used to making decisions quickly, are not afraid to take risks and are not very sensitive to errors in the service.
Last minute tours, as a rule, are sold to almost all countries. But no one canceled visa restrictions. No matter how attractive a trip to France is, 3 days before departure you will not be able to get a Schengen visa, without which the trip will be impossible. Therefore, you need to either think about obtaining a visa in advance, or choose visa-free countries and countries where a visa will be given right upon arrival at the airport (Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, etc.).
There are traditional dates when last-minute deals are simply not available. These are the New Year holidays, May holidays and the peak of the tourist season in a certain country.
A last-minute tour definitely does not suit you if you are limited by the date of departure and cannot vary it; if it is important for you which hotel to stay in (meaning not star rating, but a specific location or the availability of specific services, such as a spa); if you are not at all indifferent to which airline to fly with.
The main question of people who purchase last-minute tours for the first time is when to buy a ticket. During the week? In 3 days? The evening before departure? There is no correct answer to this question. After all, the time of the appearance of special offers can not be predicted. It is possible that profitable options will appear only a day before departure, or perhaps prices will begin to fall even 10 days in advance, while they may gradually decrease or hang at a certain level.
At what point it is better for you to buy a tour, you can be guided by a travel agency employee. He has much more knowledge and experience in this area than you do. But there is also a big pitfall here. It is much more profitable for a ticket seller to convince you to buy a tour right now, even if he is well aware that the price will drop further in the near future. After all, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow you can easily contact another agency and purchase a ticket from them.
The very process of buying a burning tour is akin to the proverb "whoever gets up first gets the slippers." Therefore, we must act quickly. In advance (a few weeks in advance), select sites offering "burning" tours. Study all the offers on the Internet, draw up a list of hotels that suit you. But be prepared to change it. After all, by the time you get from home to a travel agency that will book you a room and a plane ticket, everything can already be sold out.
You should not go to a travel agency, as they say, unprepared, i.e. not imagining anything about the place of future rest. Remember that travel company employees are mostly interested in one thing - to sell as many tours as possible. They won't be able to mess around with you for hours while you read reviews and explore the hotel. At best, you will have to rely on the knowledge and taste of the employee, at worst, you will not buy anything at all.
The cost of the same tour in different travel agencies may vary. Do not be too lazy to compare the price of the tour with different travel companies. Sometimes a discount is provided for a tour that is initially too overpriced. But there is no point in calling two dozen travel agencies. As a rule, their offers are 80-90% identical. It will be enough to compare the offers of 4-5 companies.
It is better to contact a travel agency whose partners are several travel operators at the same time. So the chance to buy profitable tours increases significantly, because the list of proposed countries and hotels is wider.
Think about the reason for unsold vouchers to a particular hotel. Maybe the lack of demand is due to the low quality of the proposed holiday? Be sure to read the information about the hotel on the Internet: go to the hotel website and carefully look at all the photos. Read reviews from tourists. Of course, reviews can be customized, but still you will make some impression for yourself.
Often, managers will offer you the cheapest hotels to make sure you like the price, tactfully keeping silent about the lack of service or other problems that exist in the hotel. For example, the expression “animation is not up to par” may mean that only one person speaks Russian in the hotel, and he ate, and the phrase “renovation at the hotel is almost completed” may hide active construction under the windows of your room. Therefore, you should not completely trust the manager with the choice of the hotel where you have to rest.
Take an interest in the political situation in the country where you are going (after all, you don’t need problems with a return flight at all, or even worse). Do not forget to check the weather conditions (otherwise the sea temperature will suddenly be +15). Another important point regarding exotic countries is the need to be vaccinated.
On the other hand, thinking for a long time about buying a "burning" tour is an unforgivable luxury. This is not a T-shirt in a fashion boutique that you can try on 10 times. The same tour is sold by several tour operators, and it is offered to a huge number of potential buyers. And it is offered very actively. And, of course, no one will wait for you. Often, you have just taken out your phone - to consult with relatives, and the tour has already been bought.
Please note that the price of the tour is very dependent on the season. The hotel where your friends rested at the end of May, even at a “burning” price, can cost twice as much in mid-August.
Another nuance - the biggest discounts are made on the most expensive hotels. Those. You can save $500 by purchasing a tour worth more than $2,000. And don't expect a $400 discount on an initially $600 package.
Before signing a contract for the purchase of a tour, be sure to check the star rating of the hotel, the availability of a round-trip air ticket, accommodation conditions, and type of food.
Tune in to buy a good tour, then, along with the gentle overseas sun, you will also be warmed by the thought that you bought this ticket much cheaper than the people around you.

Surely many of your friends have successfully gone on a last-minute vacation, and some, on the contrary, were terribly dissatisfied with the hotel, service, and infrastructure. Remember that any option is possible when buying a regular tour. Well, just unlucky or lucky, that's all.
For those who are used to clearly planning their lives and can name the date of their vacation six months in advance, there is an early booking when you buy a tour for July-August in March-April. At the same time, the travel agency usually also provides discounts, although less significant.
Sometimes, waiting for "burning" prices for tours, people are faced with a completely opposite phenomenon - prices begin to rise. This happens when demand for certain flights was initially very high and tickets sold like hot cakes, so in recent days, when there are single seats left for the flight, travel companies raise prices for these seats. After all, they still sell out.
One of the varieties of burning tours is tours like "Bingo 5*", "Bingo 4*". In general, this is a lottery when you know that you will rest in a 5-star (or 4-x, or 3-x) hotel, but you will only know its name after meeting with the guide upon arrival in the country.

This summer, most Russian tourists will go to Turkey. 55% of pre-purchased tours are in this country. Tunisia, Greece, Cyprus and Russia are far behind.

The "early booking" promotion for most tour operators ends on March 31, and the peak of purchases falls on the last two weeks of March. Depending on the country, it starts at different times: summer vacations in Spain can be booked in November, they start selling Turkey in November-December, Europe - in December-January.

At the start of the promotion, tour operators lure 50% discounts. Now, of course, there are no 50% discounts, and they are not always available even at the very beginning. As Larisa Akhanova, PR director of a large Russian tour operator, told RG, among the most profitable countries to buy today: Spain - discounts are 41.5%. Greece - discounts reach 30% and apply to all destinations - Corfu, Crete, Peloponnese, Chalkidiki and Rhodes. In Turkey, you can now save about 45%.

There is another secret: the prices for countries that require a Schengen visa to enter, and these are Greece, Italy, Spain, 3-5 days before departure from tour operators fall sharply down. With such a promotion, you can leave for 4 nights in a “three-ruble note” without meals for 15 thousand to Crete for two. Tour operators see that some offer is poorly understood, and reduce prices for it. For destinations where demand is growing, prices rise a week before departure.

Compared to last year, as Dmitry Malyutin, the general director of the online tour booking service, said, the average prices for tours to Turkey for the summer of 2017 cost tourists 94 thousand rubles if purchased before February 10, if purchased before mid-May for June-July this direction cost 87 thousand. With early booking, Greece cost vacationers an average of 81 thousand rubles, and a month and a half before departure - 99 thousand. A tour to Italy, bought before February 10, was sold for 92 thousand, later it cost 94 thousand.

The main advantage of early booking is the ability to choose the hotel that you like or that you have already been to before it is sold out. It is possible that its price will not differ much from that offered by travel agencies 2 months before the start of the tour. Let the discount for six months be not too big, but rest in your favorite hotel is guaranteed.

"Early booking - most often these are not cheap tours - for a large family or company," says Alexei Zaretsky, CEO of another large online service for finding and booking tours. "Tourists choose a specific hotel according to certain criteria, a good room with a view of sea.By the summer, the most popular and comfortable hotels either fill up to capacity or raise the cost.Therefore, in this situation, early booking is, of course, very beneficial - otherwise you can simply not get to your favorite hotel.However, if we talk about the cheapest tours to inexpensive hotels, then in the summer there are more of them. This option is suitable if tourists don’t care where to go, as long as it’s cheap.” Summer Thailand is the cheapest now - an average of 33 thousand rubles per person. But in Thailand, summer is the season of rains and low tides.

Cheaply you can relax in late May and early June (prices are reduced immediately after the May holidays). If you are not afraid of the cool sea, then you can look at Cyprus and Southern Greece.

When buying a tour for six months, tour operators do not require you to pay the entire cost of the tour at once: 25-50% of the cost must be paid within 5 days after the contract is signed, and the remaining amount can be paid 2 weeks - or for some tour operators a month - before departure. One major disadvantage of early booking is the inability to make changes to travel dates and tourist data. That is, plans cannot be changed in any way. Or buy travel insurance, which significantly increases the cost of the trip.

But, if for some reason the cost of the purchased tour has fallen in price while you were waiting for your vacation, tour operators can return the difference. But only if it is written in the terms of the contract.

Personal experience

Travel agency or independent travel?

If you want to get into a good five-star hotel at a not too space price, then take a closer look at the offers of tour operators. Very often, the price is very different from that offered by booking sites. For example, a good five-star hotel in Rhodes with breakfast and dinner cost three years ago for 8 nights about 40 thousand rubles per person. The same hotel on a popular booking site was offered at three times the price with the same terms and conditions. Still, the discounts that tour operators are entitled to work. And if you book a vacation on your own, take a closer look at the apartments: their price on booking sites is low, and travel agencies hardly sell them. But the rest will be more secluded, breakfast at the time you wish, and less noise from the neighbors. You can save on air tickets if you buy them 5-6 months in advance. At this time, there is still a chance to buy tickets at a promo price - the lowest from which sales start. The number of such tickets is limited, and keep in mind that they cannot be returned without losing the full price. If the departure date is close, then there are usually no promotional tickets, but there are flights for 30,000 for a seat in economy class and 70,000 for a seat in business class.