I receive a lot of offers for discount travel deals. This is due in part to the fact that I’ve signed up with some of my favorite websites to receive special offers. It’s also due to the fact that I’ve taken advantage of special offers so the hotels and airlines I’ve done so with are prone to sending me new offers. And I’ve noticed that the number of offers I’ve gotten has increased since starting this blog so I guess that it’s also due to my writing about budget travel.

I enjoy receiving special offers for several reasons. First of all, it inspires my daydreams about travel. Second, it offers me a chance to regularly compare travel prices so I know what’s actually a good deal and what isn’t. And third, of course, it can save me money when traveling. I’ve noticed, however, that some offers are truly good and others are a waste of time. I’ve specifically noticed this about hotel specials which are the most common type of deals that I receive.

Here are five signs that indicate to me that a special offer for a hotel is worth taking:

1. It is for a hotel that I already know I like. If I’ve stayed at the hotel or with the chain before and know that I like it then it’s usually worth it to take advantage of the deal.
2. It’s for a hotel or destination that I’ve been longing to go to. I keep a mental file (as well as a journal) of the places that I want to visit one day. When I see a hotel special for a place that is on my list, I definitely think it’s worth looking into it to see if I can take advantage of the offer.
3. The fine print is clear and seems fair. The first thing I do when I see an offer that looks appealing is skip straight to the fine print. That’s the easiest way to find out about hidden charges, inconvenient restrictions and other things that would make the deal not worth it.
4. Research indicates that it’s a good deal. Ultimately, the only way to know if hotel specials are good deals is if you take the time to research them. The simplest way to do this is to check out both the hotel website and a couple of travel booking sites to see what a standard rate for the room is. Then read some online reviews to get an idea of whether or not the hotel is a good one. A hotel that has positive reviews and is offering a deal lower than their normal pricing is usually a good choice.
5. The rest of the trip is within my travel budget. Even if I find a great hotel deal, I don’t take it if I can’t afford the rest of the trip. A realistic look at how much getting there and spending time there will cost in addition to the cost of the hotel is necessary before accepting a travel deal.

How do you decide if a travel deal is a good one to take advantage of?

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One of my favorite types of travel is beach travel. The beach is just ideal for any type of travel – a solo trip, a family vacation, a honeymoon or even a reunion trip. The beach can suit any mood from calming to invigorating. Previously on this blog I’ve done my research into some of the best beaches in San Diego and North Carolina. Right now the beaches that interest me most are the ones that are in Texas.

Texas beaches are wonderful for me because the water is warm. I know it’s hot out in the summer but I still prefer a warm ocean to a cold one. The Gulf of Mexico provides water that is just the right temperature. And, of course, the beaches themselves are also nice. The top beaches to visit in Texas are:

• Stewart Beach. This Galveston, Texas beach is a popular place with families. It offers picnic areas, children’s playgrounds and other fun things that make it great for people of all ages. There is an admission fee to get into this beach, unfortunately, but it’s a low per-car price that is reportedly worth the charge.
• Port Aransas. This beach is a fun one because you need to take a ferry ride to get there. That’s always a nice little experience for a vacation. This one tends to have lower-key activities like fishing and sunbathing so I’d say it’s better for couples traveling without the kids but definitely one to put on the list.
• Boca Chica Beach. I just love the sound of the name of this beach although I find it a little odd because my rusty Spanish says that it translates to “mouth girl beach”. In any case, it’s supposed to be the most beautiful beach in Texas and one I’d love to get a chance to explore. If I was going to do a solo trip to Texas then I might check this one out!
• Padre Island National Seashore. This area of beach stretches for over seventy miles. (Gosh, things are so big in Texas!) It offers everything from fishing to surfing depending on where you decide to stop. It also obviously offers a great opportunity for a beach-side scenic drive.
• South Padre Island Beach. This is probably the beach than most people already know about in Texas. It is tourist-friendly and offers everything that you could possibly want from a beach. Dolphin watching and boat rentals are some of the things I’d splurge on here. The one thing I would say, though, is that it’s known as a Spring Break destination so if you’re going with young kids then you might want to skip traveling there during that time of year.

What is your favorite Texas beach?

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I recently got into a discussion with some girlfriends about what it means to enjoy budget travel. Although most of us turned out to be on the same page about it, we did play a little bit of devil’s advocate during the discussion. Here are some of the things we decided that budget travel does (and does not!) mean to us.

Budget Travel Does Mean

• Getting a fair price on a trip. Budget travel doesn’t necessarily mean paying the lowest price possible to go somewhere. It means being able to enjoy a trip at a price that you consider fair. For example, it means getting good deals on hotels even if those hotels are more expensive than some of the ones your friends would choose to stay in.
• Finding free and cheap alternatives to higher cost options. We all agreed that budget travel means doing your research to find ways to enjoy your trip that are lower-cost than the average traveler may pay to take the same vacation.
• Learning to budget. Ultimately, we felt that budget travel means learning how to set limits and boundaries for yourself when planning your trips. It means learning to create a realistic travel budget and then to stick to that budget when traveling. It means setting a travel spending cap for the year and not exceeding it (unless an emergency warrants it, of course).

Budget Travel Doesn’t Mean

• Being uncomfortable. Budget travel means getting a good price for good travel. It may mean staying in economy hotels but only economy hotels that are comfortable and safe. It doesn’t ever mean sacrificing comfort and safety for the lowest price.
• Traveling to the cheapest places. Sometimes budget travel does mean traveling to destinations that are cheap rather than to expensive cities. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean this. It may mean budgeting wisely to go to a more expensive destination.
• Being cheap. There is a big difference between being frugal and being cheap. None of the gals in the group wanted to be penny-pinchers, to skimp where it wasn’t necessary or to skip travel altogether to save money. Instead, we want to be frugal with how we spend our money when we travel, making smart choices that reflect our strongest beliefs about how we spend both time and money.

What does budget travel mean to you?

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Capitol Reef National Park in Utah

I recently came across a Yahoo! Travel article about the least-visited national parks in the United States. I had never thought too much before about how many national parks there are and how few of them I had visited. I also never considered the fact that some of the least-visited national parks may also be the cheapest to visit. They are still amazing to see but they are much more affordable than places like Yellowstone and Yosemite.

The ten parks listed in the article were:

1. Biscayne National Park in Florida.
2. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado.
3. Capitol Reef National Park in Utah.
4. Channel Islands National Park in California.
5. Congaree National Park in South Carolina.
6. Great Basin National Park in Nevada.
7. Isle Royale National Park in Michigan.
8. North Cascades National Park in Washington.
9. Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.
10. Wrangell-St.Elias National Park in Alaska.

These national parks seem to be much more affordable than the most popular parks that people visit. For example, the entrance fee for Capitol Reef National Park in Utah is only $3 per person or $5 per vehicle (and the vehicle pass is good for a full week). In contrast, many of the nation’s most popular national parks costs $20 per vehicle for single-day-use only.

It’s understandable why the big national parks cost so much. With hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, they have to charge fees to keep the area clean and pristine. Plus the prices deter some people from visiting which is sad but does help control the problem of overcrowding. It’s nice to know, though, that there are some really amazing parks to visit that are still very affordable for families on a budget.

Of course, some of these are going to be more affordable than others for families to visit. For example, a family living on the East Coast may find it much cheaper to travel to Florida or South Carolina than to get to Alaska. Also, lodging may be cheaper in some areas than others if you’re going to need to find a hotel near the parks. Nevertheless, these are all stunning places that really seem worth looking into more carefully.

Have you ever been to any of these national parks? Would you recommend them for family travel?

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What websites do you use in order to book your travel plans? Smart travelers will shop around online to try to get the best rates for their trips, of course. However, you usually end up finding one or two travel booking sites that you like best. You then use those sites as your go-to sites when doing travel planning.

What you’ve likely noticed recently (or at least what I’ve noticed) is that these travel booking websites are changing. Some of them are starting to aggregate information from more locations. Others are providing more information and options than in the past. Still others are offering new user interface options.

I spend a lot of time planning imaginary trips using travel booking websites. What can I say – I enjoy the planning as much as the trips themselves sometimes! What I’ve found to be the best features of today’s most up-to-date travel booking sites are:

1. Great mobile version of the site. These days you want to be able to access, review and update your travel plans from your mobile phone. The best travel booking sites have great websites that are also good in their mobile versions. The inclusion of free helpful travel apps is an extra plus.
2. Total pricing information. One of the most important things for me is that the website have true and accurate pricing information. I want to get the best price for my trips. This includes knowing about baggage fees, taxes and any other extras that I may be charged. Sites that don’t provide this complete information just aren’t up to par these days.
3. Based on search engines. There are two types of travel booking sites today. First are those that are more like travel agencies that aggregate information from a select set of service providers and book the trip for you. Then there are those that function more like search engines to find the best current deals for you from around the web and allow you to then book the flight yourself. I tend to prefer the sites that are based on search engines. They usually provide more information and lower rates.
4. Excellent filtering options. I want to be able to choose the exact type of travel that I’m looking for and get only information that suits my needs. The best travel booking sites have great options for filtering out everything from too-early flights to flights that won’t take my credit card rewards miles.
5. Images, videos, tips and reviews. Today’s travel booking websites provide a lot of information for the traveler who wants to make a smart choice. I want to be able to see pictures of budget hotels, read reviews about the experiences people have had on different airlines and pick up some tips for my type of travel.

What do you look for in a good travel booking website?

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As a general rule, I don’t think that vacations are for shopping. However, I know from experience that there are times when you end up shopping during your trip. Sometimes it’s because you come across such great local stuff that you have to have it. Other times it’s because you end up needing items unexpectedly during the trip. Still other times it’s just a bad impulse that takes over.

Here are ten rules that I follow to keep travel shopping low-cost and to a minimum:

1. Pack well. Making sure that you pack everything that you could possibly need during a trip helps to prevent arriving at the destination and finding out that you need to buy something that you already have at home.
2. Don’t shop at hotels. Hotel gift shops and stores adjacent to hotels are almost always expensive. If you do find that you need something (such as medicine or a toiletry item) then you should head to the nearest local store instead.
3. Don’t buy souvenirs for others. The family back home can see your pictures and hear your travel stories. They don’t need more stuff.
4. Buy only what you can not buy at home. If you see a local item that you really think you want, look very carefully at it. Ask yourself if you could find a similar item back home or on the Internet. If you can, don’t buy it. This helps you to only purchase items that are truly unique and really represent your travels.
5. Only buy things that will last. You should be as discerning during travel shopping as you are when shopping at home for high-quality items.
6. Know how you will use it and where you will store it before you buy it. This helps prevent wasteful purchases.
7. Learn to barter. You can save yourself some money on the purchases that you do make by negotiating for a lower price before you buy.
8. Consider taxes, currency exchanges and shipping costs. Don’t just look at the price of the item. Consider the total cost of the item including getting it back home.
9. Take time when buying items. The worst decisions are made when you’re under pressure to buy something before you leave the area. If you don’t have the time to make a good decision, don’t get the item.
10. Set a budget. If you know that you tend to buy items when you travel then set a reasonable budget for doing so and don’t spend more than the budget allows.

Do you have any other tips for frugal shopping during trips?

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Some of the problems that we’ve had to overcome when taking crochet projects on the road include:

• Taking little parts along. Some of the easiest crochet projects for kids don’t just include yarn. Jewelry, for example, sometimes uses beads or other accessories. Toys require craft eyes and sometimes ribbons. What we quickly learned is that it’s a hassle to take these extra parts on a trip with us (with the most common problem being that they get lost). We’ve had to make sure that the projects we take traveling are projects that don’t require anything except a single hook and some yarn.
• Packing up the yarn. Yarn doesn’t take up a lot of space when it’s in the car so it’s fine to take crochet projects on road trips. When it comes to traveling by plane, however, you quickly realize that yarn can get bulky. One solution has been to make sure that we are all working on a single-color yarn project using the same yarn so that we can share yarn. We have a special tote just for yarn now that becomes the carry-on for one of the kids.
• Running out of yarn. Inevitably, we have run out of yarn during a trip. In order to finish a project, we needed to go to a craft store. This takes time away from other trip plans and involves spending more money on the trip than we had budgeted for. That’s not a good situation so we’re having to work on that by preparing better and accepting that when we do run out of yarn we’ll need to wait until we get home to finish the project.
• Crocheting too much on trips! I am very glad that the kids have taken so well to this craft. However, I’m concerned about the fact that it’s taking their attention away from other trip experiences. They aren’t playing as many car games or taking as many photos to prevent boredom since they can crochet instead. While I do want them to be crafty, I don’t want them to miss out on true trip experiences. We’re working on limiting crochet time on the road in favor of other trip-related activities.

All in all, I continue to believe that teaching kids to crochet is a great asset to family travel. I just didn’t anticipate that there’d be so many things to deal with in adjusting to this new travel activity!

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I understand that not everyone is into budget travel. In fact, although I definitely love to travel frugally, I am not necessarily into the kind of extreme frugal travel that others are into. So I can respect people who would choose to pay more for their hotels or flights than I would because I realize that not everyone travels the same. Nevertheless, I have to say that I was a little bit appalled when I found out the price of the new Barbie-themed hotel rooms in Paris.

The Hotel Plaza Athenee in Paris, France has recently transformed two of its rooms into Barbie suites. They are designed with pink decor and special touches to recreate the feeling that you are living in a Barbie dream house. It’s certainly a little girl’s dream. And at approximately $2000 per night for the kids’ room (the parents’ suite is next door and costs even more for the night) you would think it would be a parents’ nightmare. After all, who pays that kind of money to indulge their children with a special hotel room?

This isn’t the first time that expensive hotels have had Barbie theme rooms. Several Hiltons around the world have also hosted short-term theme rooms for the famous doll and there’s a Barbie-themed hotel room at The Palms in Las Vegas. The rooms have such features as a hair-and-makeup bar, unique Barbie furniture and lots of kid-friendly entertainment. I don’t deny that this might be a fun experience for a child. I just can’t imagine spending that type of money on a hotel room for my kids. And although the room is set up to be suitable for teens, it’s really geared towards younger girls including girls as young as 3!

I am willing to spend some money on travel for my kids. I want them to see the world, experience other cultures and get to know types of terrain that aren’t available in our own backyard. However, what I want them to remember is the experience of those new places. I want them to remember the things we discovered on our walks, the local foods we ate, the museums we saw, the people we met. I don’t want them to simply remember the hotels we stayed in. In fact, I don’t want much of our travel time to even be spent in our hotel room!

What do you think of this kind of spending on a hotel room for a child?

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Photography has come a long way over the years in terms of accessibility. It used to be something that was fairly costly. Buying and developing film was not cheap. These days, however, you can snap photos without spending much at all. Get your hands on a digital camera or be even cheaper and take photos with your cell phone. Upload them to your computer and store them there instead of paying to print them out.

What I really love about all of these changes is that people who are enjoying budget travel can take really good pictures on a budget. A look at some of the best budget travel photos on the web will prove this. For example, check out iamdpw.com. This is the budget travel photo collection of a traveler who has been all around the world. He keeps things cheap but he sees lots of cool stuff in affordable destinations. His pictures show off many of the amazing things that I’d love to see on my own travels, like temples, villages and fall leaves.

Or head over to funkytraveller.com and check out the photo galleries there. This is a website put together by several travelers who engage in low-cost travel like backpacking. Their adventures look like a whole lot of fun. Plus the pictures they take are really great. In particular I like the albums from Dan Barlow and Andy Webb. They capture a lot of cool details that I myself wouldn’t necessarily notice on a trip.

It’s also fun to take a look at the photos on the websites for Budget Travel magazines and blogs. Budget Travel, itself, and also Let’s Go Travel are two good sites that offer a lot of information about traveling at a low cost. These sites have professional writers and researchers and from the looks of it also must have professional photographers. I certainly can’t take pictures of this high quality but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy looking at them!

And finally, of course, there’s Flickr. There are so many Flickr photo pools for budget travel fans that I won’t bother to list them here. Suffice to say that I find it easy to spend hours on the site sharing photos and thoughts about photos with fellow budget travelers! I think looking at other people’s pictures of cheap travel makes you remember to enjoy the little things about your own trips regardless of whether or not you take a camera with you when you go.

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I haven’t yet made my travel plans but I’ve got a solid To Do list going about what I need to do to make it to Houston this year and enjoy the trip. The list includes:

• Figure out if we should drive or fly. I think that we’re probably going to do this trip in the early fall and it will be a short trip if we do. In that case, we are most likely going to fly there. However, since the whole family is going, it is probably more cost-effective to drive so I still have to look at the options more closely.
• See if my husband really wants to go. I say that the whole family is going but the truth is that I only know for sure that I’m going with the kids. My husband might want to skip this trip. One of the ways that we save money on family trips is by having just one adult go with the kids to avoid the price of a second adult admission everywhere we visit.
• Look for a cheap hotel. It looks like there are some good discount hotels in Houston so this shouldn’t be a problem.
• Make an itinerary. I don’t want to have a full itinerary of what we’ll be doing every minute of the day, of course. However, I do want to make sure I make some plans in advance so that I know what to budget for the trip. We’re going to have to re-work some of other travel plans this year to fit in this not-really-planned trip so I need to make sure that we’re really organized about the whole thing.
• Ask my online friend from Houston if there’s anything else I should know! I’ll keep you updated about what she has to say. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for a first time cheap family trip to Houston, I’d love to hear them.

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