This week on The Millennial Travel podcast we have an interview with Scott Keyes, the founder and CEO of Scott’s Cheap Flights. In 2013, he found a flight deal he just couldn't pass up—a $130 round trip ticket from New York City to Milan. When he returned home, his friends and colleagues asked him to let them know the next time he finds a great deal. In a nutshell, that’s how Scott’s Cheap Flights came about.
Scott’s Cheap Flights newsletter aims to enable people to travel and see and experience the world. Unlike automated flight deals and alerts sent out by way of affiliated links, they leverage their team of human flight experts and innovative software to provide meticulously-vetted and high quality deals that are worth their members’ time and money. Some are even mistake fares!
To date, Scott’s Cheap Flights has more than 2 million members (and growing each day!). The total amount of airfare their deals have helped members save is already at a whopping $100 million! Scott’s Cheap Flights is run by a remote team with members situated in many parts of the world. Undoubtedly, they are making people's travel dreams attainable, one deal at a time!
So far, Scott has visited a total of 46 countries. He lists Oaxaca, Mexico as his favorite destination. He runs Scott’s Cheap Flights with co-founder and COO, Brian Kidwell.
Personally, I recommend the Scott’s service in The Millennial Travel Guidebook and gave Scott’s Cheap Flights a great review. Many people have asked if Scott’s Cheap Flights Premium is worth it, and I always say yes. Scott’s Cheap Flights is very legitimate--their mission is to enable people to travel and experience the world!
For more on this topic check out our guide: Travel Hacking: Saving Money and Finding Cheap Flights.
In this episode of The Millennial Travel Podcast I discuss with Scott Keyes of Scott’s Cheap Flights:
-How to use Scott’s Cheap Flights.
-How to find cheap flights.
-When and when to find cheap flights.
-Is Scott’s Cheap Flights good for domestic travel or/or international flights?
-Scott also shares what the 24-hour rule is, the holy grail of the cheap flights world, and the cheapest time to book a flight.
-Travel hacking booking flights.
-Where to find cheap flights last minute
-What apps and travel hacks does Scott Keyes use?
-What blogs or other resources does Scott read?
- TravelisFree.com
- View from the Wing with Gary Leff
On finding the best flight deals, Scott has this to say, “The better the deal is, the shorter it’s going to last. So finding out about them early and being able to book early is really really key.”
For more on these topics check out Solo Travel: Our Ultimate Guide to Traveling Alone.
Resources from Scott Keyes:
- Sign up for Scott’s Cheap Flights
- Scott’s Cheap Flights on Twitter @ScottsFlights
- Instagram @ScottsCheapFlights
- Facebook Scott’s Cheap Flights
- Scott’s Cheap Flights Facebook Community
- Scott Keyes’ new book: Take More Vacations: How to Search Better, Book Cheaper, and Travel the World
Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Soundcloud, or Spotify.
Direct support for The Millennial Travel Podcast comes from The Millennial Travel Guidebook: Escape More, Spend Less, & Make Travel a Priority in Your Life... and from our new USA hiking and camping trips
Auto generated transcript of the Millennial Travel Podcast with Scott Keyes from Scott's Cheap Flights:
00:00:00 You are now listening to the millennial travel podcast with Matt Wilson.
00:00:06 What's up, Podcast? Listeners is Matt coming to you with another episode of the millennial travel podcast. I am very excited to continue with this Series dates, Scott, from Scott's cheap flights. This was recorded in a free covid. World as research for the millennial travel guide, book, escaped more, spend less and make travel a priority in your life, my book out on Amazon, and I also want you to know that I did this recording on Facebook live with Scott. So we have a little bit of interaction with our community self. Had a little fun. If it sounds a little different, I think honestly, that the worse. So I'll probably go back to our normal recording to get you. The best quality content was a really fun time and extremely valuable conversation with Scott.
00:01:06 Everything that we talked about is absolutely relevant in a, in The New Normal in the post covid world. So, check out Scott's cheap flights, you can get all of the show notes on the under30experiences blog. For this one, you can go directly to Millennial travel podcast., and that will redirect you. And last but not least, I want you to know our Black Friday sale out there getting ready at under30experiences we are going to be selling trips the day after Thanksgiving we're really excited. Actually we should start the day before Thanksgiving especially for our community and yeah we're just thrilled to
00:01:59 Tell trips in that 2021 is within our sights. Got the big vaccine announcement from the two drug companies. We have border slowly opening up, I know things are not the best right now in the United States but we do have hope for 2021. And we're thrilled to be just able to get back to normal. So we expect a smooth rebound and we're doing our very best to mitigate all are risks. And yep, we really hope that you go out and support our small business on Black Friday, especially because, wow, we have some good discounts out $400 off and even more on our trips on sale page with some real deep discounts going on over there. So I check out on under30experiences.com for all the details and appreciate you guys and just want to. Thank say, thank you, thank you for the support.
00:02:59 Is this crazy 2020 Year. I hope this podcast is giving you some hope and a little bit of inspiration and I know things will get back to normal or The New Normal eventually and just want to say seriously thank you guys, really grateful for our readers are listeners and a community. Thanks again, I'm your host, Matt Wilson. And today we are here over Facebook live with Scott ties. He is the co-founder and CEO of Scott's cheap flights and she helps people get well, what else than super cheap? Flights to over 1000, Lumen numbers, 1.6 million people, I believe our members of the side. So you certainly have a whole lot of experience there and sharing your wisdom with our community. Scott. Welcome
00:03:56 Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. Let's jump in want to come on Facebook. So yeah, yeah, you know, it feels it, it, it still feels weird to me to have that moniker, but, you know, look being able to work every single day, in, in the travel sphere to help people to really help kind of like remove the barriers to travel that stopped. So many folks from being able to take those trips before. Now being able to, it's a real dream come true for me. And and, and so the funny thing was I was never one of those folks entrepreneurs, who really like wanted to found a startup who's like life though. It was to start some business. We're just looking for a good idea. I don't have a background at all and business. In fact, my background is in journalism. I was little journalist actually for years and years. And if you know anything about journalism, you know that
00:04:54 There's a lot of good reason to go into it. A financial compensation is not one of them and but, you know, if you're still someone like myself, who really wanted to be able to travel and see the world figure out a way to do that. And so using kind of like four blocks like tips and tricks to really develop an arsenal of tools over the years that would help me find those sorts of deals, find those ones that were much much, much more amenable to my bank account, then you know that $890,000 round trip flights over to Europe and culminated. Then I found the best girl I ever got in my life, which is non-stop from New York City to Milan 430 bucks round trip. It was his idea. I couldn't believe it actually wasn't. Even some of that was on my radar. It wasn't somewhere. I'd like really, you know, we've been itching to go to but you know, for that price to be able to fly.
00:05:54 To Europe non-stop for a hundred thirty bucks, round trip going to jump on that no matter where it is. I took this great trip and Scott heard about that, great deal you got. Can you let me know next time? So I can get in on it too. And so rather than trying to remember every single person that I needed to let know. Next time I kind of feel like that I was like, okay why don't I just start a simple little email list? No way I can let everybody know it once and so for the next eighteen months or so, two years I'll be there to do in my free time, you know, for sure early For the Love of the Game. Over that time, your friends and tell their friends. People would kind of like to know list you should get on it and I did all kind of been grew until 2015 when it has gotten large enough. That's not what I was like, huh? I wonder if there is a business opportunity.
00:06:54 Relaunch this an actual business and it's been growing ever since then, and that's still kind of the premise of what we do today is we're just a group of folks who are obsessed with finding cheap, flights searching all day every day for those in it. Really incredible fares and then when we find them putting it together and simple little, you know, simple Little Dealer and letting her subscribers know, you know, all that one. So if they're interested they can book it. If not no worries. There will be plenty more deals to come. Thank you for sharing this story and I know people are our timing and already on on Facebook live. Of course I have a ton of questions for you that I can. I can send your way but yeah, we already have people in here who I haven't heard from you in a long time. Members of the community, please say hello. You can believe on Facebook. You can wave at us or like this or send us Hearts. I see hearts when I'm doing this, I don't know why, but yet we already have Liz Warner saying,
00:07:54 Set timer. I booked three flights through your site. Thanks, and they meant to say Scott, but yes, I can't give a little a little heart or like, if I can to that, you figured it out faster than I have Scott where you always a traveler.
00:08:23 You know, it was going to take a step back. Yes. In the sense that like growing up, you know, every summer my family, try to take a trip together but typically growing up that was Lemon Road Trip, you know, I grew up in in just a small little village, was him there going to be a town or Village in Southwest Ohio and so anytime you want to go somewhere we would pack up the car and road trip and it wasn't until actually college that you do. You say, Erica, if you want to go over Asia, there's no real way to get there other than to fly. Like once you're there, you know, the thousand-dollar Villas and caviar, or you can be staying in hostels and eating, you know. I guess for for lunch like like there's so many options when she there, but it's almost like the great equalizer that everybody has to get there the same way.
00:09:23 You've got a fly and now it was a kind of so much of what really drove my my interest in it was saying like if there's this one, has a CD in order to be able to travel and that's buying tickets buying flight. How do we make sure that, you know, people aren't paying more than they have to. Like, for most folks, the actual flight, there's just a means to an end. It's a way to get where they like to go. And so you know who wants to pay $1,000 for a flight if they know that the person next to them, got it for $400 but that's a real. There's nothing like you're paying more than you had to repay more than the guy sitting next to you. And then so that.. Kind of really drove me early on to start to figure out those tips and tricks to get the best deal if we can get some tips and tricks out of here at how did the man himself? That would be great. So if somebody is planning an international trip, where's the first place?
00:10:23 Obviously cheap flights has a good place to start tonight and sign up for the mailing list. But where do you send people if they're going to begin their search? So the funny thing is, no, we sell flights. You know? We're not, we're not a competitor of like Skyscanner or orbitz. It's what we do is take a step back to think about the disorder, the way we buy airfare today vs what it was 20 years ago. 20 years ago, the way people buy flights that go down to their local travel agent. Asked how much are, you know, would like to do a family vacation to London, how do we get there? And then, you know that pull up some and now you know, obviously all that stuff is come online. I'm not telling anybody anything, they don't know their, but the fact that all of a sudden we have all this information at our fingertips hunt, you know, all the fairs.
00:11:23 Annie's between any two City pairs is at our fingertips and we have no idea what to do with it like you, live in. What's a my home airport? Growing Up Update, and you're trying to fly to Rome. What should that play cost like? That is such a complicated question that that it seems simple, it should just cos x number of dollars. But you know the thing about flights is that is not like buying a gallon of milk where the price yesterday is essentially, with the price is going to be today in essentially what the price is going to be tomorrow in Oak Brook, take a couple pennies like like the flight of other price of a flight that exact same flight is going to be in a might be $1,300 yesterday and I dropped $300 today and might be up to like $800 tomorrow and need. This isn't just like theoretical they literally we see this this exact those exact type of fair jumps.
00:12:22 Like you don't know, you know is the price going to go up or come down, you know how it's going to go in any given fear and so because there's all that information or fingertips if we don't really have a good way to sort of makes sense of it or to translated it gets difficult. It is is is, is, is flight more expensive than ought to be? Would I be better off waiting when I get a better off looking? Now, these types of questions are really sore, too complicated for folks. And so that's why we really built this thing where we spend all the time searching for those flights and that way in a Windows, really good deals pop up, knowing that they're not just not going to last very long. You know, that $130 flight I told you about the Milan, that's the only lasted about 6 hours, you know, it's going to last
00:13:22 It's a finding out about them early and being able to book quickly as really, really cute, easy for folks that sort of what we have permits on finding those. And then alerting people as quickly as possible. One of the one like from granular tip that a lot of people have really taken advantage of his special for folks in the US. There's something called a 24-hour Rule, and actually took personal advantage of this to eat during that Milan flight where I under Federal Regulation in the US. If you book a flight, either departing from or coming to the United States, you have 24 hours after that booking after which you can. Like during that 24 hours after you book, you can cancel that flight without any penalty at all. And like, like that's a great thing for people to know. Just isn't sad to know that that option is there. But it's especially important when an incredible Fair pops up because, you know,
00:14:22 It's only going to last six hours and so, you know, if that and so I booked it and I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to take that flight, but I knew if I waited a day or two until I got to the point where I was a hundred percent. Sure I wanted to take it. That's fair. Was going to be long gone. So what I did was I booked it and that way I knew for, okay, for the next 24 hours, I'm good. Like I know I've locked in that price and I can I can cancel if I want to. I've kind of bought myself that 24 hours locked in the price there and a lot of folks, especially with those mistakes. There's a lot of folks on our on our list have become real pros at doing that, locking it in when it's a low price, just to give himself time to make sure it doesn't disappear on them.
00:15:07 Call Scott will yet. Thank you for explaining some of that to us. And with more people joining in on Facebook live, I wanted to shout out a couple people. I'm not sure if some of these are your friends but I wanted to shout out Selena who I haven't seen since College Roland who is down in Cusco Peru. He's our manager under 30 experiences, leading our Inca Trail trips. We've got Gary who who you might know? Liz says that Prague Roman Iceland for the trips that she was booked through. Scott, ask you more about Iceland because I saw that featured on your site as a place which might be a great Book price of a 2019 because of cheap flights. We can we can get to that. Jonathan Cruise's former trip leader for us down in Costa Rica, Austin, Community manager. And will Benway came at us with a question. I will see a big part of Honor.
00:16:07 Under30Experiences Community, but he said the airline prices on purpose, to drive traffic or are they mostly glitches on Splash. They have no clue why price has dropped. That's an excellent question. Like, how they build algorithms were even? They can't control it anymore. Who knows? What most of the time that's not the case. Every once in awhile, though, that is the case in what when that happens, you know, when that hundred $30 flight that I personally got from New York to Milan, the airline did not mean to sell that price. That was one of those where it, we know we call it a mistake Fair. They they they sold that ticket at a price that they did not mean to don't. Don't come around here, Ubly often. But man when they do it's amazing, you know, those are the real kind of Holy Grail of the cheap flights World in general though. Guess they they, you know Airlines
00:17:07 Selling tickets at the price that they mean to. But I think the key distinction and nothing to be aware of is that most of the really good, really exceptional fares. The ones that are actually worth buying or unadvertised sales, you know, these are not a price drops or fairs that you're going to see commercials about is not ones that you're going to see where the ads about because the airline's know these prices are so good. It's going to sell themselves. Like there's only there's a limited number of seats that they have on the plane. They don't need advertising to sell, $400 round trip, flights to Reno from the US to Europe that does those are going to sell like that you like. But they don't want to and if they run an advertising campaign about them there after you, no say it's going to stop at someday. They have to promise that they're going to be there, they're going to get too many people trying to get those. And so they do these unadvertised sale because that way, it gives them flexibility, and so they can stop selling those seats. Anytime they want to know, their kind of watching, how many of them are being sold.
00:18:07 How many are left and they can cut it off at any given point. And so I figure look, we know that these that there's going to be no X number of seats on sale for $400 round trip over to Europe but they're not going to let folks know. Like, I want to be one of the people who find out about that and I want to make sure that all the people that you don't think we're all the people on Statue place. Are the ones who are getting those seats that they're not kind of hearing about it too late. That's such a sure about an amazing deal. Just like I miss that, you know that I just sold out or just just disappeared. Now we're going. So trying to really kind of get those great deals but get them in time is is kind of that the, the challenge that we Embrace when we wake up everyday,
00:19:07 Explain a little bit more Scott how Scott's cheap flights work. I know that is not a search engine. I understand that it is a mailing list. We were introduced by a mutual friend, former guests of mine are very recently and I told everyone their office that you know how it was going to go on Facebook live with with Scott. And everybody said people that knew about you before I did and I work in the travel industry, it's the best-kept secret that everybody knows about. Yeah, so, the way that Scott's cheap flights operates is, we know that the, the airfare is constantly going on sailing constantly popping up. It really good prices, but like I said, they're not advertising it and it's not consistent, or rational or predictable, you know, those that $400 think today is probably not going to be there tomorrow.
00:20:07 And it might not have been there yesterday, they're kind of car. They're almost like a shooting star, it's constantly sort of appearing, and disappearing. And so what we figured is like, all right, look, we are a group of folks were a team of folks who are really, really good at finding those cheap, flights at that, finding those, those deals. And when we do find them, you know, we have enough expertise and experience at fighting, those to be able to say, all right, here's this incredible deal. We just found to London for 350 bucks. Round trip, based on past experience know, we can say, like the normal price on those routes. Tend to be what's a $900, we can search it out and say, okay, here's the parameters and we found availability from February through. May I hear, you know, here's how long they will expect this to last of me. I'll maybe will say, okay, we think it will last for the next 24 hours, we're hopeful it's, you know, it's a bit of a guesstimate, it can't say for sure. But will say like,
00:21:07 Hey, that's what is prediction. And then, you know, the airline that the prices on any specific route and what we do is we just going to put all that information together in a little email alert and we just send it out to to all the members. And so for folks, to Alexey New York and Boston and Chicago are available on that. For our, our members who are in New York or in Boston, for in Chicago, they're going to get that alert and then they can kind of decide for themselves. Hey, am I interested in going to London? Does that seem like a really good price? Do I want to go and my other dates in there that work for me and for any given number is very personal decision. Do they want to take that or not? But the funny thing is, the business model that we've created is not one where we are pushy at all, like we don't get any commissions, we don't get any Kickbacks, it doesn't matter to us on any given flight, if somebody books books it because we don't get any financial compensation for. That are only like goal is to make
00:22:07 Sure that people are getting feels that they're really interested in. So the way from a business standpoint we support that is we have a premium membership where there's additional perks for for a premium members at and they can get deals, just from their specific, the specific airports. They want they get them, you know, they get all the deals were still just a limited selection. Go to the free members, they get them, you know, 30 or 45 minutes early. They said there's no ads in their emails, that sort of stuff and but, you know, so for folks who are on the premium with what the hell is Century depending on where they live, go get anywhere from a few to maybe 10, or 15 deals, every single week that are saying like, heck here. So, you know, $500 flights over to Japan. Here's $550 lights, down to South Africa. And that way, you know, if they're in the market, if they're looking to go somewhere, if there's somewhere that really cool that that maybe they never even heard of, but you don't have $300 flight over to Sri Lanka.
00:23:07 Yeah, I never thought about going to Sri Lanka book for $300. Heck yeah I'm going to go. I mean that's exactly what happened to me to Milan. I never planned to go there, but for $130, but you better believe I was going to get on that flight. And so that's what we try to do for four members and you don't make sure that they're not missing out that there are in the known so they can decide if they want to book that flight or not. Also, and letting everybody know that this year, you're free mailing list us at no additional markup or charge to them. As you mentioned you might have ties through advertising. And also, yes, he would do have a premium membership, which is great but yeah, it seems like an amazing resource. Yeah. That's that's exciting. And I appreciate the spontaneity of what this type of mailing lists that I can add to, to someone's life for if you will.
00:24:07 And one of the things that I have bread on the scottscheapflights blog, was that the biggest barrier to traveling internationally is crossing the ocean. So if you are going to Asia, for example, you get it doesn't write your even if you end up in Sri Lanka. Maybe that's not the best example of how you can mend Bounce from there anywhere that you really want to go or if you found yourself in Milan, okay, you have all of Europe to hop around on trains and cheap Ryanair flights. Could you could you talk a little bit more about that concept? Because that seems to be the biggest part of travel hacking here. And let me give you a personal example. I used to live in Washington DC and probably like the second or third best deal I've ever done in my life was from DC to.
00:25:07 Belgium to Brussels for $225 round trip while I actually got that deal twice and the funny thing about it was like it was fine, you know, it seems okay but I knew you know, once I get across the ocean that is the most expensive part. Once you are actually in Mainland Europe, I could get to where I actually wanted to go super cheap and I can decide where I wanted to go. And so it's like for the first protect you flew from Brussels, over to Oslo Norway and then went up to like true, stopped explored all around Norway because I knew, you know, that flight from Brussels to ozma was like 50 bucks, round trip. That's super cheap. And for the second one I went from Brussels or actual back to Ireland and and just traipse around Ireland, for for a week. And because again, I think it was like $60 on Aer Lingus or something. So once you're in Europe, it's extremely extremely cheap tube.
00:26:07 Around 2 to whatever country multiple countries that you'd want to see in a way that if I had insisted, like, looking for flights from DC to, to oslow, or DC to Dublin. Those were likely much much, more likely to cost something like seven hundred fifty bucks round trip and, you know, at 225 + 5225 + 60. I got a flexible about where I landed in Europe and then continuing on from there, really, really cute, that's especially true. If you're looking to go somewhere, that's a bit more far-flung or bit more remote. So I was the Greek island trick. So let's say, you want to go to Santorini. If you were to pull up flights, go fight sexpedia. Wherever from, what's a like New York to Santorini? It's probably going to tell you about $1,500 round trip.
00:27:07 It's far too expensive. It's very popular. But the thing is regularly, we see flights from New York to Athens non-stop. Go on sale as low as like, $400 round trip, sometimes, even lower. And once you're in Athens, you can hop a Ryanair fly, you can help, you can help. You can hop on a cruise or Ferry out to the Greek Islands for like 50 bucks, round trip, 60 bucks, especially over to somewhere, like Santorini. So you add that together by splitting it up, getting across the ocean and then finishing on to your final destination, you know, in this case for Santorini would be $1,500 to do in one itinerary for $460 to do it in two itinerary. So every single time, it's going to depend a little bit on in a kind of wet out there is available, but that sort of flexibility in that sort of like
00:28:04 Mindset of how to search this. I think it's something that proves really fruitful when people are looking for cheap flights to self the summer. And I didn't know had the time the flexibility. And so, I did it in a little bit different way, my girlfriend I were coming back from parlos and so we took, we took the head of the school now cruise ship tour or the ferry rather wasn't a cruise but the ferry back to how we really enjoyed Athens. And then I like to travel on one way tickets as much as possible, and okay, when the trips done, it's done. I'll know when then I can create that flexibility. But getting home, I can really find myself into some sticky and some sticky situations because you got to get home, but you got to try to do it for cheap plus, not take 19 stops on the way home. Maybe we can make it enjoyable. So what I did.
00:29:04 Exit at South Ferry to Athens. We stayed at Athens and then I found a direct flights on. I'll have to get back to you on what the carrier, was it over the last 6 months, but then flew directly to want it. Now, what I really liked is on your website, you have Norwegian air as one of the great Airlines to be able to find one ways. And so I was able to find a one-way direct Gatwick back to Austin. And so just by taking two flights and getting the opportunity to explore Athens getting the opportunity to explore London. I was able to break that. I'm sure it takes a few days to get home and we were tired by the end but not as my opinion. I'm just tired us. If we would have been had. We taken that three leg flights.
00:30:04 What's what's especially interesting about? That is like so often the way people, look, there's always going to be the same way to start your search search from whatever airport close by to wherever it for you. Ideally like to go. But the key the key thing for people, if you want to get cheap like it don't stop your search. There are so many people just start it. See what the price and just think well, you know, $1,100 that's it. It is what it is and the key that I think it's only try to really educated folks on is like, expand your search a little bit search for nearby, airports search for big hubs nearby because oftentimes, it can be cheaper. Like you said, if getting to London and then getting a separate flight back to the US, actually, probably significantly cheaper than trying to do it in in just one Fell Swoop. Plus, the great thing about it is then you can actually structure in a way so you
00:31:04 Spending time in that additional places. Well, if you'd like so you know, for those those trips but mine through Brussels, I spend a day in Brussels on either as my times, I wanted to spend in Brussels. Hope you don't have a few beers walk around, it was great but I didn't have to like I didn't have to just stay in the airport and and then continue on like I had one come in one day and then a day or two later had the the the final flight onwards ghetto with that flight from, you know, they took from New York to Milan 430 bucks. I didn't live in New York at the time. I lived in DC. I just took a, but, you know, that the flight was on Monday and see what they did. Is, I took a bus up on either Friday or Saturday hung out with some friends in New York for a couple days. And then on Monday, you know, flew out over to Milan. 430 bucks round trip. It was amazing invite. If I had just tried to search for that flight out of DC and come along. It would have been eight hundred bucks easy. And so, by being a little bit more flexible and not just stopping your
00:32:04 Your search right at the very beginning. That's the best way to really kind of make all your options and see for yourself to spend another day. In, in, in London, spend a day in Belgium to spend a day in New York or two. And, and, you know, and then fly out for some people. They just want to get there as quickly as possible. That's great. You know, it might not be as cheap, but but pay for a lot of people, you know, what time is running in first out for other people. I had just get me that $300 flight over to Europe. I'll let you know. Sleep on the subway in New York. If I have to, I don't care like to eat, everybody's a little bit different. And so being able to kind of at least know, all your options is really key. Sure and the wave people wave to people on Facebook.
00:33:04 Man, so many good friends on here. This is great. I saw Becca Baker from Atlanta. She's are the 30 experiences Community manager down there. But yeah a lot of our community managers can take advantage of the because okay if you see flights from another Facebook groups out there to that you can join and to all right, if there's cheap flights going out of Atlanta about them. If you see, oh my friend posted about that etcetera. So now these are all good. Good resources for people. That's got to go back to what you were saying about selecting multiple cities, when you search now, on some search engines, Google flights and Skyscanner you can select. For example of multiples,
00:34:04 Is that you be willing to fly to? I believe or you can just select I believe a continent or Skyscanner. I think you just type in anywhere and they'll just tell you wherever you fly but you have to select your
00:34:21 Departure. And yeah, you have to select your departing city. Is that correct? And I yes, Google flights the way it works is that you can put in multiple origin airports and multiple destination airport. So you can say like let's say you live in New York, you can put in, JFK, LaGuardia and Newark, but then you can also put in Philadelphia and Boston and and maybe even like BWI or store somewhere else and that way your making sure of all these five or six different airports. And then what say you just really want to go to Paris, you put pears in the destination. You're saying of all the six nearby airport, which one of them has the cheapest flights over to Paris and it'll tell you know, hey maybe for February 5th through 12th. The cheapest flight is actually out of Philadelphia, but then, you know, it February 13th through, 22, cheapest flights out of JFK, still being able to have that flexibility.
00:35:21 Really, really nice. I found my Google flights with the most powerful for being able to kind of search those broader and more more airports all at once a day actually but never similar features well-liked Skyscanner where you can kind of you can't put in everywhere but you can put in either specific countries are specific continents. I'm too old to play around with even the math Explorer to a way you can kind of see on any given day seeing if there is anywhere in Europe and you just kind of scroll around and tell you it's a lot of fun. I remember spending spending, probably too many hours can a Day Dreaming when I used to be in the office in the office. So you know, Magic Isle man, I could go to London for, you know, 3 or $50. I can go to Paris for 400 and some imagine ink so that that that's their stuff is really fun to me.
00:36:21 Unity, every once in awhile. That's great. I love him. Cool. Okay. So we'll see another question for us and already about Iceland 2 and it sounds like, wow, air is not doing so well, right now. And he'd like to know, if you think there's going to be less competition and getting people across the pond leading Icelandair British Airlines and virgin to raise their prices from the US Northeast to great. Great question while I'm here.
00:37:06 I'm going to tell you when you're sending me explain why? So I actually don't we don't send out. Wow Airlines deals but I really hope that they survive as an airline. Let me explain why we don't send them and I hope they surprised we with Wow Airlines, you know you'll see him often times grabbing headlines, Adobe on the news because it's a $99 last year. I think a few days ago to $49 flights to Europe and
00:37:45 As is so often the case with. But you know I'm Tina. Once you start to peel back a couple layers that onion, you start to see a little bit more, you know. Alright that's $1 is just a flight out and we'd like to get back home, you know, in the return flights are in $49. So let's say it's like $200 which is usually usually it's at least a hundred fifty or two hundred bucks. So $200, then you're looking more at like 2:50 round-trip, still very good, that's an excellent price but we haven't accounted for anything else yet. And the thing about wow Airlines is you know, most Airlines these days weather tonight at Delta, all those charge for checked bags, nowadays even on flights to Europe, but we're wow, it takes it. The extra step is that they actually charge you for a carry-on, so you can even if you're packing light, you know, anyting basically more than a purse somewhere. You want some clothes to wear to change into, when you get to Europe anything more than just a purse, you're going to have to pay.
00:38:45 To carry on and so can you like, it's a carry-on, you know what, they're going to cost 25 30 bucks, that's sort of what we're used to paying for as a bag fee, in the US. But no, know if you're flying let's just say from the u.s. to to London on. Wow, it is. I typically about $65 as just for the carry-on bag and a $65 each way that's $130 there and back. But the thing is, they charge it her leg and every single, wow, Airlines flight connects in Reykjavik every single one. And so it's not $130 if 165 to Reykjavik 65 to Europe, 65 back to Reykjavik, by back to the Uso, you're talking 200 and $60 all of a sudden, just for your bag, just for your carry-on, not even a checked bag. So already, we're at the fare of 250 + 264 the bag. We're at 5:10. We haven't even gotten to seat selection which is charged for that. We haven't got
00:39:45 Into like maybe I'll kneel or like a bottle of water. And so, the reason why we all to mately, don't chose not to sin, because we put that when you start to account for, just the bare minimum to be able to travel it ends up being not nearly the deal that it seems like it was when it was $49. That all being said, I love what all these budget Airlines have done because, wow, Airline because of Norwegian because of ice are airasia's. Just starting between Asia and in the United States because of those Airlines they come in with these, just rock bottom prices. That puts a lot of pressure on, you know, are on Delta on United on Air France. I'm pretty sure with all these other ones to compete on.
00:40:45 Christ. And so bad at your forces, them to lower their fares. Just you know, as a response to try to make sure that they're not losing too many Flyers to these Budget Airline. So it ends up being really good for passengers. Even for passengers who say they'll never take a, a wow, Airlines flight. And you know, frankly if if more budget and start to go out of business, it's probably going to be the case that that prices would start to rise industry-wide. So that's why I even though we don't send them, I hope that they don't that they continue to stay afloat. Seems like they just got a cash infusion from a private Equity Firm that that was involved. I should know this off, it is either in Frontier or spirit. I think it was from here but you should know that they seem like they're on a bit firmer footing today than they've been, it was like a month or two ago, so fingers crossed that continues.
00:41:41 Coldwell Banker that that speaks to the Integrity of your list because you're not just copying and pasting owe $49 and Blasting that to your email list, you'd get a great open rate, I'm sure. And that would be quite valuable to your advertisers but that's not doing your audience any favors. That's exactly right and that's why I'm such a warm reception positive feedback from this freemium model where we don't have to try to you know Chase the highest open race. We don't have to play the clickbait game and try to, you know, what century like like height of people are or or otherwise, you know, entice them with something. That's a bit of a bait-and-switch. We can be really straightforward with people, you know, even the way that we structure our headlines is we try to pack in as much information in the email subject line because we figured we want you to know as much about this deal.
00:42:41 Phone. So maybe it's a deal to London and you just got back from London. So your new invention. I don't want you to have to waste your time, like going through it, the way, you know, you might have to if we phrase it is like oh you know, Rock Bottom fares to popular European, Western European, you know, City that feeling very comforting a night for me not to have to play that game is the most optimal time to book. The first time, I just want to shout out a couple people who have come through I'm waving now at Owen. JJ Stone. I said rubel a bishop Craig
00:43:29 Craig came back, I will will hide a comment that he said, that's a frontier, will burn through that 75 million dollars in in 6 to 12 months and Ramirez miles from Costa. Rica is is signing on anybody else that you saw on there and if your friends are you guys cool. Tell us when you have an ultimate guide actually that I'm going to so that people can go read all the details for yourself but to give them a little bit of content here. There's two things to think about when to book like literally went to get on your computer in and booked whether it's midweek weekends middle of the night, that type of thing. And then also
00:44:26 Times to avoid, right? Like Christmas obviously is going to be a tough time to avoid, and but then there's times where you can find cheap flights. So, what would you tell people about that? Yeah.
00:44:40 The first thing is, I think it's important to really be explicit about what we're talking about when you say like cheapest times for flights, because I think it gets it often gets confused. When are the cheapest times to fly versus winter? The cheapest times to book. Exactly doesn't really matter. You know time of day typically oftentimes you know the first one in the morning sometimes cheaper but typically it's going to follow. January, through May and September through November 10th to be like the cheapest times of year to travel like when you're going to see the cheapest fares and the reason why is the most expensive times are summer and so that Christmas New Year. And that's, you know, when you just have a lot more competition, a lot more desire to travel. So,
00:45:40 Summer, you know, you got teachers and students and families, no parents with with kids who are in school, all trying to pack their travel, in their flights into this sort of to 3 months. And then some kind of day do around Christmas New Year's. You know, a lot of folks have time off from work or time up from school and want to be able to travel then. So when you have that many more people trying to flight two are trying to fly and the airlines don't have you know a ton of planes in that they're like keeping in reserve to meet this increased demand or anyting that's why you see those prices tend to go up those times of year.
00:46:16 the question, know about like the cheapest times to book really, really interesting one and the answer is basically,
00:46:26 First, you don't want to wait too long, you know, you don't want to wait till like the last week or two before flight. And the reason you're used to be the case 20-30 years ago, that those flights were where the cheapest, any unsold flight or any unsold seat, right? Before the airline takes off, they figure look, this is lost Revenue. So Wolf's last price to try to get people in that was thinking for a long time, then the airline's kind of started to realize that the people who are booking in that last week or two weren't Leisure Travelers like you were, right? It was folks who were travelling, you do for their job and they didn't care what they paid because they weren't paying it was the company. So they aren't actually jacked up the price now in the last week or two rather than slashing the price. So you want to avoid waiting too long to book for domestic. Flights are recommend booking at least a month in advance for international flights at least a couple months in advance. And if you're looking to travel in one of those Peak periods annoying in in summer, or in,
00:47:26 Christmas New Year, adding at least, at least two or three months on to those recommendations. But one thing I also do recommend as well is training with the book, too early for most flights in the reason why this is especially true for domestic. Flight is if I let's say I really want to go somewhere for Halloween weekend. You know where like what are the nine months away from the airlines have that? Well, most of them Southwest doesn't have those prayers loaded up yet but like any of those on sale quite yet, they're waiting till three four months ahead of time or so. And so if I put that flight right now and given that when you book a flight unless it's on Southwest, it cost a heck of a lot of money to change or cancel it. I'm locking myself in at a higher price and potentially missing out on future sales or try to cause people against necessarily book.
00:48:26 Choo choo early as long as they're comfortable waiting for that kind of again for domestic. Flights typically 1 2, 3, 1 2, 4 months, and ahead of time to book for international flights more like 2 to 8 months ahead of time. That sort of it, the golden window. But then again it's not booking any old fair in that time is not just searching at some point two months in advance and just yes by it's like when there's a really good fair in those periods, that makes sense since it blog post on these topics. And I don't want you to just have to repeat the stuff that's already out there for Bi-Lo on your website. One that comes to mind. Maybe this is on your website. I don't know. But I'm curious what you monitor all day. What apps that you have? Obviously, you're doing the work.
00:49:26 For people and they can just get the email and sit back and wait for it, but you've got to have some tricks up your sleeve. Yeah, so the terms of the tools or Google flights is personally, my favorite site search engine if you can search a ton of different airports all at once but it's really really quick like and when you're doing the sorts of volume of searching that we're doing, you know, search of hundreds, if not thousands of routes and fares in a given day being able to do those in a couple seconds rather than you know 20 seconds or so. Really, really adds up from a big fan of Google of Google flights that just does like the search engine but that you know the funny little
00:50:12 The funny Little Secret one of the most popular questions, like, where should I be searching for cheap? I said what search engine do you like the best and and, and, and I'm proud to recommend Mission racing. I just really like it, but the funny secrets there actually mostly all the same, like, they're mostly basically running on the same, what's called global distribution system, they're getting the same fares like maybe something most / it by a couple dollars to try to, you know, to try to like like it. So should be a lost leader, maybe they lose a couple bucks on that or cut into their Commission in order to try to get more market share. But functionally, you're mostly going to see the same types of pears. The one thing that I know that I do really try to impress, some people is that, especially when you're looking to travel domestically or till like the Caribbean Mexico, stuff like that. Remember that Southwest, their fares do not show up on flight search engines.
00:51:12 Flights to go to Expedia. You going to orbit, you're not going to see any southwest price. You have to be so complicated. Why that is why they chose to do that when you have to go straight to southwest.com to to search the? And normally, I would say that, you know, it's just one way or another so it worth it. But the fact that Southwest a, you know, you get free checked bags, where you go see if they have free ticket changes and cancellations is just it can be really, really beneficial especially let's say there's a trip maybe in a few months that you're like kind of on the fence about. Yeah, you might go, you might not what I'll do. Personally, a lot of times I'll just go on Southwest, I'll see the fair, I'll book it and I know, you know, look, I've locked it in at that price. It's not, you know, I'm not going to any higher and I can kind of decide closer to then some point in the future. You actually want to take that flight or not and if not I can cancel, you know? No fuss. No muss. No worse for the wear and
00:52:12 Otherwise I can especially cool to is it the price drops if let's say I bought a flight 450 bucks and then you know they run a say on a couple weeks and it's down to a hundred bucks. I can just change it or cancel and re book and and you know, heads I win tails. You lose type of situation. But for once it's actually that the passengers, the Flyers were coming out of head, rather than the Airlines. And that's great Scott. What's your take on the southwest? Of fact, I remember how we do a lot of business down to Costa Rica and we were excited that Southwest was going to start flying into Costa Rica that we might see other people try to compete with them and lower their prices. So it is that or is that a real thing? Absolutely. You know, we have been seeing some really, really exceptional airfares over to Hawaii lately. As low as you know is $235 round trip from the West Coast over to Hawaii in the 200 300 from West Coast,
00:53:12 300 400 from the rest of the country round trip over to Hawaii as low as they've ever been. And I think one of their their few reason for that. But one of the primary drivers is the fact that Southwest any day now is going to get their certification to begin flights over to Hawaii and so the other airlines, you know, Frank the running a little bit scared about it they'd they'd know how popular Southwest as you know that that that the free checked bags are all real popular things. And so I think they've been really kind of the other airlines have been cutting their fares in the temperature. Really kind of like Get market share to try to woo as many Travelers over before Southwest comes in because you know, it's going to like you said, there's going to be a little bit of that Southwest effect, once they once they do start flying that. So I'm really excited for it. I think it's going to be really, really great for proposed to go to travel to Hawaii. Especially considering historically is not a very cheap place to be able to fly to
00:54:13 You know, even a couple years ago, the normal round-trip price. Let's say you're in New York than normal round-trip price. To get over to Hawaii more like 800 bucks 7:50. If you're lucky and nowadays regularly, see it under 500, occasionally under 400. That's great. Scott, I want to ask you just a couple quick more questions before I let you go in. If anybody has questions out there on on Facebook live, please, this is your chance. Drop them in there and I will I will forego my questions if we have audience questions, but let me get this one in there. So few are in a major city in the United States for the year 2019, where should people be looking or started to think that might be a good place to travel where they may?
00:55:13 See some cheap flights this year. All right, so they're definitely good deals this year. So mention Hawaii, definitely one of them Iceland expecting to the still quite quite low and not just on budget carriers but on on sort of would have called The Legacy Airlines Delta American in the Spain really really has been exceptionally cheap lately, you know, regularly in the 300 from much of the country even as low as the mid 200 from New York City like that for the typically cost to fly from New York to like Denver, you know, something, and now you can fly over to Spain sometimes, even Paris and Rome have been on there as well. So Western Europe, southern Europe. Looking really really good. One thing though, that it like,
00:56:12 If I if I have to predict about like where I think is going to be a cheaper this year, that's sort of what comes to mind. What are the things that I really should have recommend? Folks is if you really want to be able to travel and get cheaper flights in usual, the way that most people tend to think about flights is first, they choose where they want to go second that use when they want to go and only on step three, you today kind of look up the price and buy setting prices. That's what a third order concern, terribly surprising that it ends up being not a very good price usual. So what are really recommend for folks, is if you want to make cheap flights to Priority, if you really want to get those deals and especially for someone like myself, who would, you know, there's basically no where on the world I wouldn't love to go. Rather than they're just me. I only want to go to Paris, right? Only want to go, to Rome, you're like me and you really want to go see most places.
00:57:08 Set price as your first order concerned. So, very first thing where are there cheap flights doing that? Can you know either you can be getting that from Google flights searching, you know, I'm putting your up and and just see what were the cheapest ones available or keeping an eye on our emails. Letting you know when the Wendy's really good deals pop up and then you know, there are there is there anywhere in there that can really kind of peaked my interest and, you know, I'd love to go to London. I'd love to go to Budapest. I'd love to go to Vienna and, you know, are their dates were those cheap. Flights are available that work for me, April 9th to 16th. I can get off, and there's been $50 flights to Vienna then. So, by setting kind of trying to really get the cheap flight first and fitting in the rest around that, you end up getting really good deals. And if you know on the flip side, if you sent kind of location first and Gates first and then try to get the cheap flights often times, trying to but
00:58:08 Do it that way? You don't end up getting, you always get Affairs in general else. Are you reading or following? Are watching other, than, of course, God's cheap flights that. But there are, you know, there are people who deal with Allison points and anything really, that might be helpful to the audience, to check out that we can absolutely that. I really, really loved one is a travel is free.com. They do a tad, just a ton of kind of really original. Interesting research on how to get the most value from your miles, how to get the most value from your points you know your your credit cards but especially in a way. So that like
00:59:04 Let's say you're you're you're you're you're getting an award flight. How to make it so you can add in an extra City for free, or you can go to like two different continents in in one trip for you know it's just an extra five thousand miles or something really really cool interactive maps and stop their big fan plus I like it because they tend to go to really interesting place that I wouldn't have necessarily, but it wouldn't necessarily see elsewhere. So every travel blog, I love him ever try, black has stuff going to Iceland, are going to Barcelona, going to wrong. Choices are great. But you know one of my most recent post and travels free was a road trip. Around central Mexico between like Monterrey and San Luis Potosi and like kind of that just north of Mexico City area and I never really kind of seen these waterfalls before tips and recommendations on how to do that. Really, really appreciate that content and then the other one
01:00:04 From the wing is a blogger name. Gary laugh, who is just incredibly smart counting nuanced. Blogger knows everything about the airline industry and can give really really great perspective. Anytime, you know, there's their stuff like an airline might be going under or there's some new regulation on seat size or there's some new, you know, nothing about, you know, they're charging more for bags or stuff like that. He is, he is really kind of smart inform commentary on it. And I always, I always like to read your tricks, your hacksaw, all of that good stuff and obviously people have heard by now Scott's cheap flights to you on social media if they want to interact. Yeah we're on Facebook or on Instagram or on Twitter at Scott's cheap flights on all the lights.
01:01:04 Rrr travel coming. We've got it. Linked on in Facebook. What is a group of like 80,000? Some people who love to travel love to goof off during the day talking about you know, what the best place to eat in Lisbon. What is what's the coolest who are to take in Prague, you know, where where should you go in Spring, if you're going to Southeast Asia, really really kind of remarkable to see the amount of travel experience just in this one group of folks a chat with one another. So yeah. We'd love to have you part of it. This outside as as wide as we can, of course, of their mention, the show notes on under300experiences.com. We're already here on Facebook. Live different podcast can be found she is I don't know. ITunes SoundCloud Stitcher. All those fun places and soon we are launching the millennial travel podcast, which we will Air this episode.
01:02:04 Appreciate it. Awesome. Thank you so much for helping me. This is really great. Sounds good. Thank you again cool. Alright thanks. Take care. Bye.
01:02:21 Podcast listeners. I hope you enjoy that episode with Scott Keys and if you did, I would be so thankful. If you went under30experiences.com, this Black Friday and checked out our deals and used some of these tips and tricks that he has told us all about in 2021. I would be thrilled. Don't forget to rate and review podcast given a lifetime YouTube, all that fun stuff that you guys so much.
