Publié: 17/05/21 | 17 mai 2021

Les vols abordables de Scott sont l’un des sites Web les plus importants et les plus beaux de recherche sur Internet. Je les inspecte régulièrement lorsque je suis à la recherche d’un nouveau voyage. Ils sont tout simplement inégalés dans les offres qu’ils découvrent (au moins pour le marché américain). Son fondateur, Scott Keyes, a récemment composé un livre partageant tous ses conseils d’initiés ainsi que des techniques intitulées Take More Vacations: exactement comment parcourir mieux, réserver moins cher et parcourir le monde. (Divulgation: je l’ai bliblé. C’est vraiment bien.)

Au fil des ans, Scott et moi avons fini par être de bons amis depuis notre partage d’économiser de l’argent lorsque nous voyageons. Je me suis assis avec lui pour parler de son livre, des astuces pour découvrir des vols abordables, ainsi que ce à quoi s’attendre dans un monde post-confortable. (Alors que quelques-uns de ses conseils sont centrés sur les États-Unis, pour ceux qui en dehors des États-Unis, il y a encore des informations ici que vous découvrirez utiles.)

NOMADIQUE MATT: Parlez à tout le monde de vous. Comment êtes-vous entré dans ce domaine?
Scott: Après avoir obtenu mon diplôme universitaire et commencé à travailler en tant que journaliste sous-payé, j’ai réalisé que mes espoirs de voyager à l’étranger dépendaient complètement de ma capacité à découvrir des vols abordables. Je me suis jeté dans le sujet, à faire des recherches et à tester ainsi que pour comprendre pourquoi le billet d’avion se comporte la méthode qu’il fait ainsi que tout ce que l’on peut faire pour obtenir le meilleur coût possible sur les vols.

Tout cela a culminé en 2013 lorsque je suis tombé sur la meilleure offre que j’ai jamais obtenue personnellement dans ma vie: sans arrêt de New York à Milan pour 130 $ aller-retour. Bien que je n’étais pas prévu de voir Milan, quand j’ai vu ce prix, c’était, bien sûr, une évidence globale. Il n’y a nulle part dans le monde que je n’irais pas pour 130 $ aller-retour!

Quand je suis revenu de ce vol, Word s’était propagé à mes bons amis ainsi qu’aux collègues, ainsi qu’à un par un, ils ont continué à venir autant que moi avec la même demande: «Hé Scott, la prochaine fois que vous découvrirez un Offrez comme ça, pouvez-vous me laisser comprendre pour que je puisse l’obtenir aussi? Au moment où la 8e personne m’avait demandé, j’ai réalisé que je n’allais pas pouvoir garder à l’esprit tous ceux que je devais le faire savoir, alors j’ai compté sur la solution la plus simple: commencer une simple liste de courriels. Je n’avais aucun concept à l’époque, mais à ce moment-là, les vols abordables de Scott sont nés.

Pourquoi avez-vous composé ce livre?
Il y a cette énigme étrange dans nos vies: nous voulons tous voyager plus que nous.

J’ai pensé qu’il pourrait y avoir deux causes possibles: le temps ainsi que l’argent. Pas suffisamment de temps n’est certainement pas la situation pour beaucoup, mais je ne pense pas que ce soit la situation pour la plupart des gens. Il s’avère que plus de la moitié des Américains n’utilisent pas tous leurs vacances, ainsi que collectivement, nous partageons environ un milliard de vacances inutilisées chaque année.

Au lieu de cela, c’est le coût ainsi que les tracas de réserver des vols qui entravent tant de nos rêves de voyage. De plus que cela, le billet d’avion est la chose la plus tortueuse la plus tortueuse que nous achetons. La vérité que cette chose que nous exigeons pour voyager est si volatile et incompréhensible nous amène à trop payer pour les vols ou, pire, faire passer des voyages potentiels.

Pensez-y de cette façon: si vous aviez un code promotionnel qui a fait tous vos futurs vols à 200 $, voyagerait-tu plus que vous le faites aujourd’hui? Pour la plupart d’entre nous, cette réponse est oui.

En d’autres termes, à moins que vous n’ayez un fonds en fiducie, les vols abordables sont la clé qui ouvre le monde.

Pour qui croyez-vous que plus de vacances seront pratiques?
Quiconque rêve de voyager plus qu’il ne le fait vraiment, ainsi que quiconque s’annule à chaque fois qu’ils achètent des billets car ils n’ont aucun concept exactement comment empêcher trop.

L’une des plus grandes idées fausses de mon monde est que les vols abordables doivent être des vols gênants. Pas vrai! Le vol qui m’a amené à démarrer les vols abordables de Scott, par exemple, était un vol United sans escale que j’ai découvert de New York à Milan pour 130 $ aller-retour, dont deux sacs inspectés.

De même, une erreur majeure est que les vols abordables sont uniquement pour les personnes ayant une flexibilité totale. J’ai consacré un chapitre entier de Take plus de vacances au sujet de la polyvalence, car si communément, je vois des voyageurs sacrifier involontairement leur capacité à obtenir des vols abordables en se disant «Je n’ai pas de flexibilité».

Bien sûr, quelqu’un avec une polyvalence totale a bien mieux vos possibilités de marquer une grande offre que quelqu’un dont les dates ainsi que les destinations sont verrouillées dans la pierre. Cependant, l’une des erreurs les plus coûteuses que les gens font régulièrement consiste à croire à la polyvalence en tant que commutateur ON / OFF plutôt que par un gradateur. “Je n’ai pas de flexibilité” est un piège auto-imposé qui garantira que vos rêves de voyage n’ont jamais fini par être plus que cela. Plus vous pouvez découvrir pour vous-même, plus vos chances d’obtenir un vol abordable.

Ce livre n’est pas seulement pour les 22 ans qui prennent unpost-graduation trip to Europe. It’s for anyone hoping to travel more as well as better.

If it’s true that we’ve been living in the golden Age of affordable Flights, why do people so many people still overpay for airfare?
First as well as foremost, it’s since airfare behaves like nothing else we buy. When you buy bagels, the cost is essentially the exact same on any type of provided day, as well as it mainly depends upon exactly how many you buy. however when you buy flights, the cost is extraordinarily volatile. The exact same flight that costs $800 today may expense $300 tomorrow as well as $1,300 the next day. as well as the cost of a flight bears bit relation to exactly how far you travel. It generally costs more to fly from new York to Des Moines than from new York to Barcelona, for instance.

Given the complexity as well as volatility of airfare, cognitive biases cause us to overpay for flights. For instance, most of us utilize loss aversion when we’re booking flights; we fear a $300 boost more than we relish a $300 drop, so we pull the trigger on an costly flight since we’re worried it’ll get even more expensive.

Recency bias is one more one; if the fare stays put for a while, we may pull the trigger since we figure that’s just what the trip costs, without realizing that fare is likely to soon change. There’s likewise sunk expense fallacy—we get invested in the concept of a specific trip, as well as in spite of costly flights, decline to think about elsewhere.

And finally, great old procrastination! We put off buying tickets as well long as well as wind up booking flights last minute when they are, invariably, expensive.

Why do you believe so many false myths about affordable airfare (buy on Tuesday, remove your cookies, etc) persist when they are so clearly wrong? 

I believe it’s since airfare is so confusing. costs are constantly jumping around, seemingly at random, as well as sometimes fares seem to make no sense at all, like just recently when flights from Pittsburgh to Tokyo were offered for $316 roundtrip while a flight from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia expense $312 roundtrip.

That confusion leads people to see patterns that aren’t really correct or practical however seem to be a reasonable sufficient explanation. In the exact same way, a cent that comes up heads three times in a row isn’t really “due” for tails on the fourth flip, people make inferences about airfare since it offers some solace for a difficult-to-understand purchase.

And, so even though, as I explain in chapter 9, it’s not the situation that clearing your cookies makes flights cheaper, as well as it’s not the situation that flights are cheapest to book on Tuesday at 1pm, these myths persist since they explain what seems inexplicable. Fortunately, you as well as I are out right here doing our finest to mythbust!

In chapter 3, you discuss exactly how the method we’ve been searching for flights is backward. Dites-nous en plus à ce propos.

Almost every overseas vacation I’ve taken in the past decade has been a trip I didn’t plan to take.

Roundtrip to Milan for $130. Osaka for $169. Barcelona $222. Brussels $225, twice.

I hadn’t organized to see Italy or Japan or Spain before buying flights to those extremely countries. It’s not that I wasn’t thinking about seeing those places—come on, it’s Europe as well as Japan—but, like most people, I have countless locations I’d like to see if airfare was no concern.

What prompted my rate of interest in those specific trips, in other words, was the truth that fares had dropped so precipitously.

The method most of us book our flights is a three-step process that most likely seems familiar:

Step 1: pick your destination

Step 2: pick your dates

Step 3: inspect for flights

We state we want affordable flights, however by setting airfare as the least important priority, is it any type of surprise that so many of us end up overpaying for flights? Knowingly or not, the most costly error we make when booking flights is selecting a trip rather than selecting a fare.

Fortunately, there’s a much better way, as well as it’s elegantly simple: Take that exact same three-step process as well as flip it on its head.

Step 1: See where there are affordable flights departing your house airport

Step 2: pick one of those affordable destinations

Step 3: pick one of the affordable dates

You’re enabled to have preferences, of course. I’m just motivating you to put airfare in context. few of us would go to a restaurant, reject the waiter’s offer to look at the menu, as well as order the ribeye with zero consideration for cost or other options.

But that’s precisely what many of us do with flights.

We set our heart on one specific vacation, cost be damned. If Prague is at the top of your list, would you still pay $1,000 for flights if you understood there were $250 flights to Paris?

What are three things you want people to take away from this book? 
First, the method we traditionally browse for flights is harming your capability to get a great deal. all of us state we want affordable flights, however our typical method of searching for flights inadvertently undercuts our capability to get affordable flights.

Instead, in many cases, the trick to getting affordable fares—and therefore getting three vacations of what you utilized to pay for one—simply boils down to making them the top priority. That doesn’t mean only traveling to close-by cities or taking inconvenient flights; on the contrary, with a much better approach, you can fly almost anywhere with affordable (and good) flights.

Second, acknowledging that airfare is exceptionally volatile. Destinations don’t have a single, steady price. Flights to Japan aren’t normally $202 roundtrip, except sometimes when they are (like they were just a few weeks ago). Today’s costly flight may be tomorrow’s affordable one, as well as vice versa.

Finally, affordable flights don’t just save money; they lead to much better trips by letting you experience more at your destination. They lead to more trips as well as boost your interim happiness since you understand the next one isn’t far off. as well as they broaden the kinds of locations you see as well as let you find locations that charm to you personally, rather than the typical tourist.

You’ve searched millions of flights. What are a few of the crazy insights you’ve discovered about airlines in that time? 
My preferred part about airfare is the funny anomalies. For instance, all of us believe of Thanksgiving as an exceedingly costly time to travel. as well as it is—for domestic flights. however Thanksgiving is really a hidden gem for affordable worldwide flights. That’s since all those people flying house to see household as well as eat turkey are, by definition, not flying overseas. With less competition for worldwide destinations, the fares are commonly rather cheap.

Similarly, I like the anomaly of exactly how when you’re traveling somewhere remote, it can be cheaper to split your trip into several itineraries rather than one. I phone call this the Greek Island Trick.

Say, for instance, you want to fly from nyc to Santorini. If you browse that path on Google Flights, fares commonly come back upwards of $1,600. however if you browse for flights from nyc to Athens, those on a regular basis go on sale for as bit as $350 roundtrip. as well as when you’re in Athens, you can hop a ferry or budget plan flight on to Santorini for as bit as $50. So by splitting your itinerary, you can wind up saving 75% off typical prices, as well as even take a few days to see Athens before heading over to Santorini!

Where do you see airfare going in a post-COVID world? I see short-term offers however long-lasting increases. Quelles sont vos pensées?
There’s a great deal of concern that as travel demand rebounds, that’ll be the end of affordable flights. however here’s why, on the contrary, I believe the future of affordable flights looks truly bright.

First, while the pandemic definitely woke many people as much as exactly how far airfare had fallen, what many people missed was that since 2015, we have been living in the golden Age of affordable Flights. The pandemic didn’t cause affordable fares. The pandemic *illuminated* affordable fares. So if a resurgence of travel rate of interest leads to pre-covid airfares, we should be so lucky!

The reason I’m so bullish on the continued long-lasting availability of affordable flights is that airline business designs have been revamped over the past few decades. go back 40 years back as well as airlines made most of their money on economic climate fares. Today, airlines make most of their money from other revenue streams: selling credit history cards as well as miles, premium tickets like business class, business contracts, cargo, as well as so on. In other words, airlines can pay for to offer you $250 flights to Europe or Japan since those fares are far less consequential to their bottom line than they utilized to be.

I believe it’s likely we’ll see headlines over the next few months about typical fares going up. Indeed, Airlines for America’s analysis already shows that typical fares have been steadily increasing since February.

And yet, during that time period, we’ve discovered roundtrip fares like $124 to Hawaii, $378 to Greece, as well as $202 to Japan. The key point to keep in mind next time you see a headline about flight costs increasing is this: You can’t book typical fares. You can only book offered fares.

Last question: You’re a guy who takes a great deal of flights. Do you have a preferred experience?
This is going to be sappy so I apologize in advance, however my preferred flight experience is flying with my young daughter. I’ve taken countless flights in my life, as well as while I still like being in the air, the magic has faded just a bit.