Spending Littly to get to Italy - Cheap flight finder

So being a teacher, as you can imagine has its perks – well just the one – the holidays. The holidays are unfortunately tainted slightly, particularly for someone like me who loves to visit new exciting places, as we have to pay extortionate ‘inflation’ pricing during these ‘holidays’, not to mention the amount of children you share them with too (but that’s for another blog maybe).

So this is a blog on the perils of trying to find cheap flights to somewhere and making a mistake or two along the way.

My decision to check Italy off my list during the Easter holidays was an exciting one, but which city or place do I start with? I checked a number of flight destinations – Rome, Venice, Milan, Tuscany, Florence, Pompeii, Sicily; from a number of airports close to me – Bristol, Southampton, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Exeter, Heathrow, Gatwick. I don’t know if you have ever searched high and low for affordable flights, but I realised quite quickly I needed to narrow my search down. Mistake number 1 – too broad a search!

I decided Heathrow, Gatwick and Bristol would be the main airports I would fly from and Rome and Venice the cities I would like to travel to. Still a stressful, long and pricey trawl through Skyscanner.co.uk, Momondo.co.uk. Ryanair.com and easyjet.com. Eventually I found that Ryanair had the cheapest flights to Venice (turns out Rome was expensive as I was looking at dates over the Easter bank holidays – a popular destination during this time).

My search now narrowed even further to Venice and flying from Bristol, I kept an eye on flight prices. To my surprise they dropped dramatically from £140 to £90. Now this is where mistake number 2 came. I didn’t book during this price drop. My presumption was that they would keep dropping, however I failed to see on the Ryanair website that they were having a seat sale and therefore by the time I decided to book the sale was over. This meant prices went back up and were even more expensive than before.

At the risk of an anti-climax to my story, and after much deliberation on whether it was worth the price, I decided to not book my Easter trip to Italy. However, do not fear, I moved the trip to the first weekend/week of my summer holidays (early July). The price, much cheaper and more affordable at less than £50 seemed a better option for a short visit to Venice. I was lucky I could do this, being a private school teacher; I have longer holidays than those working in the public/state sector so the prices aren’t quite hiked up enough right at the start of my holiday period.

I am hoping my advice above will help others searching for ways to find cheap flights to Italy or wherever. To help I have listed below some bullet pointed tips, that I think will help with your cheap flight search:

Tammie’s top tips for finding cheap flights

1 – Narrow your search quickly – do not have lots of airports and destinations in mind, you will just waste time

2 – Research flight sales and book the flight when you see it during the sale

3 – Use comparison websites to base your search but do not be afraid to double check the direct website of the better/cheaper flight agents that come up top on these sites

4 – Decide to go when the flights are cheaper (a luxury if you can chose to do this)

Extra note – Do not try to go to Rome during Easter – the Catholics help bump the prices up even higher

Please feel free to add comments on any tips you have learnt that can help others trying to find cheap flights; websites, hacks or low pricing times/days – as I know all of these can be helpful in finding those golden cheaper flight prices.

In the future I will listen to my own, now practiced advice in the hope to waste less time trawling the Internet.