Making travel arrangements can be time consuming.

Have you left your holiday planning to the last minute? Perhaps it’s down to not having enough time to sit down and sort out your trip, or maybe you like to do it all last minute to see what bargain deals you can get.

If it’s a work related trip, are you too busy focusing on your conference presentation or meeting notes to worry about all of the logistics?

Perhaps booking travel and accommodation just isn’t your thing and you would prefer to leave this in the capable hands of someone else? Many people find booking flights and accommodation a stressful and frustrating task, so when you can turn to someone else, your Virtual Assistant for example, to do it for you, why wouldn’t you?

In a previous blog, I shared with you my tips for travel arrangements and the careful planning that is required in order to make your trip a success. I thought I’d go one step further and provide you with my recommendations for researching and booking flights and the mistakes to avoid.

Believe it or not, you are not going mad when you look at a flight, find a great price, and then when you go back to it, it has increased somewhat. Due to those ‘cookies’ in your browser, if you’ve visited a site a number of times, repeated searches can cause the site to cleverly pressure you into booking a flight before the prices rise even more. The trick to avoid this… use a private browsing mode and your prices should keep to the lowest they can be.

Let the internet do it for you. There are a number of search engines which specifically search for the best flights. I’d recommend Google Flights or Skyscanner to start off with. You’ve then got the likes of Tripadvisor too if you can’t find anything with the first two. Obviously, you can visit the websites of individual airlines, but this can be time consuming should you want to compare against others.

Fridays and Sunday’s are the most expensive. Not always the case but it’s common that you will see an increase in flight prices if you wish to fly on these days. Mainly due to people wanting to get away for city breaks. I’ve found this interesting article about the best and worst days to fly, which may be of interest.

The Best and Worst Days to Fly

Airfares jolt up and down like a plane caught in turbulence. The airlines use computer systems to set ticket prices based on a complicated mix of factors, including competition, demand, the state of the economy, seasonality, taxes, the number of views on a YouTube cat video — you name it. Ergo, it’s nearly impossible to predict exactly where ticket prices will fall on any given day of the year.

I hope that just these few tips have given you some food for thought.

If booking flights still gets you stressed then why not contact me here at Virtual Hand where either myself or one of my team members can support you in your flight quest, whether for business or pleasure.

Connect with Michelle on other platforms too: Learn how you can work with Virtual Hand; how your business can grow and how you can communicate better with your audience.