Have you ever felt the impulse to purchase an airplane ticket based solely on a stunning picture of a faraway place from social media? We sure have! Social media constantly gives us lots of gorgeous photos from travel bloggers every day, and it’s really hard to resist their beauty.
In addition to inspiring us to travel and helping to figure out where to go next, social media has become a great tool for saving money while on the road. It doesn’t require a lot of effort to save money with social media, so why not try to take advantage, right?
Below, you will find a number of tips on how to use social media to help you travel cheaper.
Look for Discounts and Special Offers on Facebook
Social media is an excellent source of good deals and discounts. Let’s imagine you’re in New York and you want to try some great local food or buy some products. Browsing around is still okay but what if everything you find is whether mediocre or too pricey?
That’s where social media step in. By entering keywords like “discounts on food NYC,” and selecting Posts (as shown in the image below), you can generate some good results.
So, let’s see what the search results have to offer. Immediately, you will notice some deals offered by restaurants, bars, pubs, and other places. Given that we used “discount” as a keyword, many of the posts should contain discounted deals as well. Here’s one of the posts we found:
ButcherBoys, a specialty grocery store is celebrating 8,000 like on their Facebook page and offering their followers a chance to win $500 in cash. Moreover, the business has some more deals, including family discount on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Also, if you buy 20 lbs leg quarters for $22 you can get 20 lbs for free!
This post has lots of more great discounts and deals that one can discover by clicking on See More.
Now, let’s travel to China! Let’s suppose that instead of the United States, you’ve decided to explore this beautiful country. You arrived in Zhuhai, one of the most modern cities in China known for spectacular golf resorts, islands, and theme parks. Let’s see how social media can help us to get some discounts there.
We perform the same search, only instead of NYC we type “Zhuhai.” Below is one of the posts we get. The London Lounge Bar & Restaurant provides 20 percent discount on all food and drinks today, including salad, pizza, and burger.
20 percent off sounds great, doesn’t it? If you hadn’t searched social media, you would have discovered this deal and saved money in a new city.
You can search for discounts offered by hotels, sightseeing companies, and even airports! For example, the Dubai International Airport organizes an annual sale in duty-free shops every August. This means that you can buy some great products for low prices if you plan your trip accordingly.
Stay on Top of Twitter Deals
Twitter is another great source of travel deals. According to Jeff Morrison, a travel enthusiast from Awriter, you won’t have to do much to find them: just follow the right accounts, use the search function, and act quickly when an opportunity appears.
Begin by making the list of airlines or hotels you’re interested in. For example, one of the most popular airlines to watch for are Virgin Atlantic and JetBlue. You can follow similar pages to get last-minute flights or discounts on rooms.
The Twitter’s search function is also great for locating good deals that allow to save money. For example, you can look for “London travel deals,” and the search will yield many relevant tweets. Also, use hashtags when searching. For example, using the hashtag #traveldeals is always a good option.
Last-Minute Lodging Deals
Some of us are not great at arranging accommodation. No worries, you can still save some money even if you arrived in a new city without a hotel reservation. For example, you can check out the options for booking last-minute lodging.
There are some good apps providing these deals. For example, HotelTonight is one of the most popular of them. It makes it easy to book rooms at great last-minute rates on smartphones (iOS and Android, mobile site is also available). According to the official site of HotelTonight, when hotels have unsold rooms, they load them on the app. As the result, you can get some an awesome deal at a great price.
The app works with over 300 hotels. The developers of HotelTonight claim that the rates inside the app are 20 to 40 percent lower than other hotel sites. Not too shabby, right?
Conclusion
Social media are a great place to look for discounts and last-minute deals. Try these hot tips to improve your strategy for saving money using social media and enjoy your trips!
About the Author
Lucy Benton is a writing coach, an editor who finds her passion in expressing own thoughts as a blogger, and currently writes for https://www.assignmenthelper.com.au/. Lucy studied Creative and Professional Writing at Cooperates with websites, resources and news blogs