It’s now the time of collecting experience rather than materials. And “travel hacking” offers this to generation Y and Z.
It is not known whether the social media is increasing its power more and more every day, young people now travel and discover new places and experience new experiences more than anything else. In this way, rather than acquiring more materials, it is likely to collect more stories to tell in the future, and everyone is looking for ways to travel more. This is why the travel hacking movement, which aims to find the gaps of the travel industry and turn these gaps into more travel experiences, is spreading worldwide.
Travel hacking in short
Travel Hacking is a concept that we frequently hear nowadays and it is a trend that contains some tactics for maximum travel by spending minimum money. Traveling inexpensive experts, in other words, travel hackers themselves, using the ways they have learned from people who have discovered it or are trying to travel a lot with limited budgets like themselves, can make a trip affordable that would normally cost a lot more expensive.
The most innocent “hackers”!
We wouldn’t be exaggerating by calling the travel hackers as the most innocent hackers of the modern world. Their number is growing rapidly in both the world and in Turkey! Because of cheap travel, these people find the loopholes of the travel industry without harming anybody or any organization, and they benefit from these loopholes they find as a result of intensive research.
When we say travel hackers, don’t think of only college students or backpackers with low income as the travel hacker community is not only limited to these groups. Traveling from a wide range of social classes, from white-collars to travel bloggers and entrepreneurs, travel lovers choose more space by spending less money because being a travel hacker rather than traveling as a standard tourist is the way for a person to travel more and get more experience and increase their cognitive flexibility by getting out of the comfort area.
The most entertaining side of the business is to join the growing travel hacking caravan. Especially the private groups established on Facebook bring thousands of experienced travelers together. It’s possible to find so many offers such as codes for free campaigns and free travel contest announcements in "Travel Hacks Turkey" with 2800 members and "Traveling Opportunities" with more than 15 thousand members. These groups also offer tried-and-tested advice on cheap travel. Even some travelers traveling alone organize more crowded and more affordable trips through the group.
How is Travel hacking done?
Travel hacking covers all the ways to get all the elements of a trip from A to Z less expensive. For example, subscribing to e-mail newsletters to learn about the special campaigns of airline companies before buying airline tickets to a remote country is a kind of travel hacking! Or instead of flying directly to the place you want to go, you can travel to different airline companies to connect with the connected flights and also to travel to see the new places in the stops in between.
Travel hacking, of course, is not the only way to get a flight ticket. According to Matthew Kepnes (aka Nomadic Matt), who is one of the world's most renowned names in travel hacking, it is necessary to have a sharing spirit to travel like a real travel hacker. In other words, instead of thinking individually, sharing the resources in the hands of others or doing the opposite is actually reducing the travel expenses.
In the name of the power of shared accommodation!
On average, we spend a large part of our budget on accommodation costs. And yet the money we spend on the hotel room we use - sometimes just to sleep - makes us experience less in the place we go. For this reason, the shared accommodation platform Couchsurfing was the favorite of travel hackers worldwide. First of all, Couchsurfing, which is registered by opening a profile system, operates as follows: Travelers who are visiting your city can find you through your Couchsurfing profile and leave comments about your home after you leave. The more positive reviews you get through the site, the easier it is to find shared accommodation on your travels.
In the recent years, AirBnb has changed the rules of the game in the hospitality industry and offers users the opportunity to operate their homes like a hotel and hostel. All the house or only one room can be rented on this platform payments are received via credit card on the site. AirBnb is used extensively by travelers who do not want to pay much for hotel rooms and want to stay in a local house.
“More savings, more experience”
Discounts and opportunities for local transport are extremely useful, especially when exploring large cities or traveling across a country. For example, it is possible to obtain more Rail Pass, which is very common in Europe and the Far East, by taking the combined train tickets. InterRail, of course, is the most well-known of these combined train tickets. This system, which is open to all travelers without any age limit, allows you to travel by 30 trains with InterRail members; it offers full combined or restricted combined options to suit any budget. Again, the daily / weekly / monthly tourist cards used in urban transportation help the travelers in this sense. In addition to all these cheap transportation alternatives, it is also possible to use the online vehicle sharing platform BlaBlaCar or FlixBus, which has the largest bus line in Europe.
Travel hackers' most ambitious issues of course, is eating and drinking with a reasonable price. For this purpose, you can prefer restaurants where local people spend time, instead of eating in the neighborhoods where tourists are concentrated, and you can try festivals, fairs and similar open air markets offering delicious street food. If you want to save more on eating and drinking, you can cook your own meals with the ingredients you get from the market by getting your stay over AirBnb rather than a hotel or hostel.
