Do you remember being jealous of your colleges having their vacation during the summer season?!
The traditional vacation season in the US is considered to be three months period between Memorial Day (every last Monday of May) and Labor Day (on the first Monday of September). This season fits perfectly the schedule of families with kids, as kids are off school and there are so many hot deals advertized around, so it’s seems to be very weird to have your vacation in some other time.
But behind hot deals on the vacation trips, there are a great number of hidden fee and eventually your only three weeks gateway turns into the pretty expensive holiday you can effort only once in three years.
It’s happens with everything, when you need to buy a flowers on the Mother’s Days it’s always more expensive than to bring flowers to your mother on a regular Friday family dinner or when you are buying tickets to the premier of the show at the double, sometimes triple price of a regular ticket, when you can see the same show, same actors only after two weeks of the grand opening. The same story works with packing for a trip.
If you decide to travel only one week after the Labor Day, your gateway will be 30% cheaper, you could go to the same places, to see the same attractions and the weather might be the same or even better and let’s see who’s going to be jealous now? In the tourism business we call it a “shoulder season” which means you can have fire-sale discount on perfectly planned vacation.
When it comes to airfare, hotel rooms or rental homes, timing is everything. The most dramatic annual price jump ups occur in places where everyone is headed at once: ski resorts in February, tropical beaches in the spring, lakes and seasides in the summer and etc. As usually you’ll pay top dollar to join the crowds, but once again you don’t have to be at the Time Square to have a memorable New Year Night of yours.
But, please, don’t be tricked by smart advertizing and buy yourself a “low season” deals with prices at their lowest point for a good reason. This is when hurricanes blow around the Caribbean and Florida, water is too cold for swimming, weather is too miserable for walking around the historic centers of Europe and the “Green season” in Central America really translates to “rainy every day” season.
That’s why the option you are looking for is the “Shoulder Season” that stretches for weeks or months between high season and low season. Shoulder season offers the chance to score a bargain while the getting is still good, when you get quality time at a better value. Those $1250 tickets you just paid for round trip to Europe could coat you only $850 in September – October!
Rates for lodging, airfare and tours often drop at this time of year for reasons, but not weather or intrinsic value. Europe is still nice in the fall or spring, but all the students and family travelers have to go back home to school.
Unless, there are still some fixed expenses you have to carry in spite of the season, such as VISA processing, but you can same here too. It’s all known fact that the rush processing of any documents will cost you almost double of what you might pay for the regular processing time. So, don’t waste your time or money, start planning your next gateway today and enjoy the life!