If you’re trying to book a vacation now, you must be wondering how on earth anyone manages to travel on a budget.  Cheap airfare is nowhere to be found, car rentals are the highest they’ve ever been and hotels are way more than you expected.  Why is that?

Summer is high season.   With kids out of school, more families are traveling, so demand is up.   When demand goes up, so do prices, and that’s what happens in summer.    So can travel in July and August ever be affordable?

Yes, if you’re a savvy budget traveler.

The most important thing to do is to plan in advance.  If you want to go somewhere that involves plane travel or renting a car, think about it well ahead of time.  Then when the airlines are having a sale, you can get your plane tickets at a discount.  Same goes for car rentals — if you book way ahead, especially if you use Hotwire or Priceline you can get a far better deal than if you book  just a couple of weeks in advance.

For accommodations, think about alternatives like booking dorms at a university campus.  You can get rooms all over the world at colleges that are anxious to bring in a little extra cash over the summer.  (But you can do even better if you plan in advance and go house-sitting somewhere exotic.)

Remember that there are certain destinations that can be done on a budget, but not in summer.  One example is Disneyworld. You’ll never get a good deal there when children from all over the North America and the world are flocking there.  So if you have to plan around your kid’s school vacation, go at a time like Thanksgiving, when you can get great bargains and also have good weather while everyone else is in the cold.

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