6 Simple Steps to Overseas Holiday (1)

The simplest way to go for a holiday is to head down to a tour agency and book a package, everything will be done for you – transport, lodging, itinerary, or even food and tour targeted shopping. If that’s what you will do, then you can skip this post.

Part of the fun in holidaying is also the process of planning and the complete freedom to decide where and what to do. My family prefer to do things our pace and to “live locally”. Hence, it is almost always that we will plan everything ourselves. Nevermind if we don’t visit touristry places for Instagram worthy shots, as long as we are there to enjoy the sights and sounds of the locals, it’s enough.  

1. Book the Air Ticket

Living in a city-state, every trip is an “overseas” one, so the mode of transport will be to fly out (Other than self-drive holidays up North or cruises which will be discussed later). I recommend you have a period of travel in mind but not exact dates, preferably at least 3 months in advance. In most cases, the earlier you book the cheaper, it is. You may also want to have a general idea of where to go, but keep an open mind if a better deal for other places pops up. Follow these sub-steps:  

Trawling big search sites

With the destination and the period of travel, go to the internet and do a wide trawl that compares fares such as Expedia, CheapFlights, Skyscanner etc. You can also visit your credit card companies’ site to look for offers, sometimes they tie up with another agent and may give you free cabin luggage if you book through them. 

You will then see a list of airlines offering the flight along with their fares, timings, number of stops etc. This will be the first decision point after you compared the prices or you have a preferred airline. 

Do a search on nearby or alternate destinations too. Many times, I was surprised by what we can get. For e.g., while looking for flights to Hong Kong, we found it was cheaper to fly to Seoul two times further apart. Again, last year, we found it cheaper to fly-in to Hong Kong and fly-out from Guangzhou compared to return airfares for Hong Kong alone. Some full service airlines can offer around the same fares as a budget airline!

Look up Official Airline  

If you have royalties with those macro searches or the trip involve transits across multiple airlines, you may go ahead and book the airfares through them. For me, once I have a decision point of a destination and airline after the comparisons, I will move to the airline official website to check the prices. Most likely, the fare will be the same if not only slightly higher. Not that I don’t trust third party fares sites, going to the official site gives you the flexibility to choose the best combination of cheapest dates to fly. That’s why I say keep your dates flexible at plus/minus 3 days or so. 

Book those tickets

Deals for the destination ticked, dates ticked. Then book the tickets and pay. Kind of unethical to use the search sites to look for deals and book fares somewhere else, akin to going to retail stores to look at the stuff you want to buy, then go back and buy online. But I got a legitimate reason. These sites do not allow bookings in groups, i.e., for my BIG family. I had to do it with the airline direct anyway.

2. Buy Travel Insurance

Once the dates are fixed, a portion of money had been committed for this trip. So to maximize your coverage, You should get your travel insurance. This is really the peace of mind that should there be unforeseen changes that affected your trip before you depart, you can still recover your fares. There are actually several hassle-free ways:

• Bundled with the airfare offered by the airline while booking the tickets.
• Call your insurance agent and asks “add-on” or “rider” on your existing plan.
• Get travel insurance using your credit cards for travel payment with them. 
• Go online and buy annual multi-trip travel coverage. 
• Go online and buy dates and area-specific coverage.

I almost always go online to look for 50% deals from various providers. And I can also be specific to the areas of coverage. Some gave family coverage for all dependents at a flat cost. So with so many kids, the cost becomes very cheap per person basis. So far I had been with MSIG and eTiQa. Unfortunately or fortunately, I can’t comment on the ease of claims from them. Hopefully, I will never need to do any claims.

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